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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap._^k. Copyright No. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 









OCT 25 1898 






* 






























































AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 




‘ 



























-• 

■ 























































4 












S 



































AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


AND OTHER STORIES 



ANNA NICHOLAS 

‘t 


tMade out o’ truck ’at’s jes’ a-goin’ to waste 
'Cause smart folks thinks it's altogether too 
Outrageoue common . — RiLEY 



THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPAN? 
INDIANAPOLIS AND KANSAS CITY 
M DCCC XCIX 




/• f* Z ; 


* J 


V*" 



Copyright 1898 
The Bowen- Merrill Company 



'0 COPIES RECEIVED* 


Printed by 

Braunworth, Munn & Barber, 
Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A. 




3nd q 


*8 9Q. ’ 


TO MY MOTHER 


CONTENTS 


PAGE. 
. I 


An Idyl of the Wabash . 

At a Way Station 32 

Mrs. Brooks’s Change of Heart . . . .60 

An Abiding Love 77 

A Farmhouse Drama 101 

The Solution of a Text 131 

An Occult Experience 141 

An Itinerant Pair 177 

A Movement in Art 201 

The Quickening of a Soul .... 221 



Herewith together you have flower and thorn, 

Both rose and brier, for thus together grow 
Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know. 

— Aldrich. 












AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 





















































t 




























AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 



HEN Miss Callista Rogers first came 


Y V from her Vermont home to the little 
Indiana town of Honeyport, on the Wabash, 
she had a sense of almost perilous adventure — 
something like that felt by the pioneer women 
who followed up the ever-advancing and now 
forever vanished frontier. 

“It is so very far away,” she said to her fam- 
ily before starting, “and while, of course, there 
are no Indians and no danger of having one’s 
scalp taken, or anything of that sort, still, things 
will be queer and the people can’t be expected 
to be like those in Vermont, not having had the 
same advantages.” 

After she reached Honeyport she wrote to her 
sister that the people were queer, but that they 
seemed friendly, and she thought she should get 
along real well. At that time Miss Callista was 
not much past her first youth, but she had lived 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


long enough to have imbibed the very firm con- 
viction that New England opinions and New 
England ways were the only opinions and only 
ways worth considering seriously. Holding 
such belief, it might naturally have been expect- 
ed that she would come into conflict with her 
new associates, but a fair degree of discretion 
prevented her from airing her views too aggress- 
ively, and her wholesome humor and evident 
kindliness of spirit led her Hoosier friends to be 
indulgent to such of her unflattering opinions as 
were inadvertently betrayed and to regard her 
with considerable favor. 

She had come to Indiana to teach school, and 
to Honeyport through the intercession in her 
behalf of Deacon Knox, an old family friend at 
home whose second cousin had married Rev. 
Calvin Evans, pastor of the Presbyterian Church 
at Honeyport. 

In those days — it was soon after the war — 
teaching, especially in the rural districts and vil- 
lage communities, was not the complicated and 
exacting science it has since become. Miss 
Callista was fairly well grounded in the common 
English branches; in the way of accomplish- 
ments she knew a little music, and as a crowning 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


acquirement had an acquaintance with the rudi- 
ments of the Latin language. This last she was 
not called upon to teach, but the consciousness 
that she was on familiar terms — hardly a speak- 
ing acquaintance, to be sure — with the ancient 
tongue was a soure of infinite satisfaction to her ; 
it gave her a sense of superiority and power. 

There were some preliminaries to be under- 
gone before she was officially authorized to teach 
the young idea of Honeyport, an examination 
among the rest, but this was not severe, and she 
stood it successfully. As for the methods of 
teaching to be adopted, there were no fixed 
rules as now under the elaborate and inflexible 
system in vogue. She was free to follow her 
own judgment, which was for the most part 
good, being based on New England common 
sense and a power of adaptation to the pupils’ 
individual needs which every successful teacher 
must have. So she taught in one of the two 
schools of Honeyport very acceptably to the 
people, who were easy-going and not yet 
affected by the “higher education” fad. 

But Miss Callista did not so easily adapt her- 
self to her new environment in all respects. She 
did not like the appearance of the town and the 
3 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


surrounding country, to begin with. The coun- 
try was too level. Her soul yearned for the hills 
as the souls of those born among them must do 
till memory fails. She missed the blue dis- 
tances, the lights and shadows, the feeling of 
companionship the mountains gave. The prairie 
was monotonous and the sky shut down too 
close. The village itself was trying to her sense 
of thrift and order. She could not free her 
mind concerning it in her letters home, for she 
was resolved to give nothing but agreeable im- 
pressions to the mother and sister back in the 
trim and prim but picturesque Vermont town. 

To Mrs. Evans, the pastor’s wife, she unbur- 
dened her mind when her sensibilities were too 
deeply outraged. In Mrs. Evans she had found 
a congenial acquaintance. That lady had lived 
in Indiana for so many years that she had ac- 
quired some of the habits and peculiarities of 
what Miss Callista called the natives, but she 
had been born in New England and cherished 
its traditions. Consequently, she sympathized 
in a measure with the strictures made by the 
new teacher, but she was a discreet woman, as 
became a minister’s wife, and the confidences 
poured into her ears went no further. Un- 
4 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


derstanding this, Miss Callista felt free to ex- 
press her true sentiments on all matters. She 
was especially indignant over the slipshod ways 
of the village. 

“It’s perfectly scandalous/’ she said, “the 
way they let the grass grow in the gutters and 
the way they let the pigs and cattle run loose in 
the street. They ought to have more pride. 
Why, when I rode up Main street in the Paw 
Paw hack that first day and saw the sidewalks 
almost covered by high grass, and cows and pigs 
lying right on the walks, and people stepping 
around them, I expected to find slovenly house- 
keeping, too. Like town, like people, I thought. 
Didn’t turn out jest that way, I’m free to con- 
fess. There are some very nice, neat house- 
keepers here.’’ 

Another peculiarity of the natives excited Miss 
Callista’s scorn. 

“I never see,’’ she told Mrs. Evans, “such a 
dowdy set as they be. Why, they don’t care 
how they look. The women don’t dress up of 
afternoons, and farmers’ wives don’t put on a 
fresh dud when they come to town; jest wear 
their old limpsy calicoes and sunbunnets. The 
men ain’t a mite better, though, to be sure, that’s 
5 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


the women’s fault. Husbands are much what 
the wives make ’em, as you know. I don’t set 
no great store by fashions and folderols myself, 
she went on, “but it’s certainly a dreadful shame 
they don’t slick up more when they go to meet- 
ing — particularly the Campbellites. Go over to 
that church an’ you won’t see a man with a 
starched shirt bosom. Not that I look at such 
things, specially, but if you have eyes you must 
see. Clean enough, all of ’em, mebbe, but no 
stiffenin’. I’d like to clearstarch 'em all once — 
men, women and children. 

“And there is another thing. Folks around 
here surmise and wonder, but can’t guess one of 
the main reasons why I set up my own little 
housekeeping. Of course, in the first place, I 
wanted to economize, but, Mrs. Evans, another 
great thing was that I jest wanted something 
good to eat. I do’ know as I’m so very dainty 
about my eating, an’ I do’ know^ I be. Any- 
how, I don’t like the cooking I get at most places. 
Of course, if you’d felt clear to take me it would 
a’ been all right s’ far as the table’s concerned, 
but most places they don’t suit me. They can’t 
make a good cup o’ tea; they don’t know how 
to make yeast bread, and not one of ’em can 
6 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


make a decent pie. I will say for ’em, though, 
that they can fry chicken to beat all creation.” 

Miss Callista conceived a peculiar animosity 
toward the religious sect variously known as 
“Disciples,” “Christians” and Campbellites. ’ ’ 
Just why was not clear. It may have been due 
to the fact that she had never heard of the de- 
nomination back in Vermont, and being, as she 
considered, a purely western product, it was, 
therefore, to be distrusted as somehow unortho- 
dox and subversive of pious principles. The sect 
was numerously represented in that locality, and 
the congregation which worshiped in one of 
the three churches of Honeyport was larger than 
either the Methodists or Presbyterians could 
muster. 

“I shan’t call ’em Disciples,” sniffed Miss 
Callista, “jest as if they were as good as the 
Twelve, an’ I shan’t call ’em Christians. The 
idear! Jest as if they had a patent on the 
name. They don’t like to be called Campbell- 
ites, but I shall call ’em Campbellites the hull 
time. How any reasonable human being can 
believe in the docterns of that church does beat 
me. An’ there they’ll set an’ listen to jest the 
scrappiest kind o’ sermons, when, by crossin’ 
7 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


the street, they could hear your husband’s stir- 
rin’ discourses.” 

It will be seen from this that Miss Callista was 
not a woman of broad mind, and that, though 
she made her opinions plain to the comprehen- 
sion, they were not expressed in that correct and 
elegant language so desirable in the teachers of 
youth. It is but just, however, to say that she 
was aware of some of these verbal lapses. As 
she herself remarked : 

“Nobody understands grammar, and what is 
proper language, better than I do, and in school 
I always take great care to speak correctly. 
When I come home, though, it’s too much 
trouble to be thinking of the parts of speech, 
and I drop into an easier sort o’ talk, as I put 
on a kitchen apron or an old pair o’ shoes.” 

Her idioms and accents she was unconscious 
of, and therefore could not drop. The born 
New Englander seldom does. She would say 
“ Indianar,” and ” idear,” and “ Mariar ” to 
the end of her days. She was quick to detect 
what she considered errors in others, however. 

“‘Bucket!’ Don’t let me hear you say 
‘bucket,’” she would tell her pupils. “It’s 
a ridiculous word; say ‘ pail.’ And don’t say 
8 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


you ‘reckon * or ‘low ’ you'll do so and so; say 
‘guess.’ ” 

Miss Callista had come West to teach because, 
even if she could get a school at her home, 
with all the eager candidates in competition for 
every place, better salaries were paid in Indiana. 
For her own part she would have preferred to 
stay in Vermont, even with the scant wages of 
the district school, but she had a mother and 
sister who needed her earnings, and it was for 
them she started out to seek a better fortune. 
The mother was a widow with a tiny home to 
call her own and an income hardly in proportion ; 
the sister, a fragile girl with the New England 
scourge, consumption, already making its signs 
visible. Miss Callista must be the bread win- 
ner, and she went bravely about her task. 
She loved her family and her home ; she had 
none of the self-assertiveness that is needed for 
those who would get on in the world; she 
dreaded the separation from her dear ones, and 
yet it never occurred to her to rebel against fate 
that made such a trial possible. She did not 
dream that she was heroic, and yet it is in such 
actions that the heroism of the latter days is 


9 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


found — a heroism not less than that which led 
the knights of old on their crusades. 

Many and many a day in her new abiding place 
homesickness pressed upon her like a tangible 
weight ; her heart ached for a sight of dear faces 
and familiar scenes ; the very sun shining in the 
heavens took on a forbidding look, and the birds 
sang a melancholy tune. But if the poor, lonely 
little woman wept it was when no one knew. 
She kept a brave face and wrote cheery letters 
to the invalid at home. Every penny of her 
salary but that which supplied her own barest 
needs went to make the life of that invalid easier. 
She not only made no complaint over her own 
deprivations and sacrifices ; she made the sacri- 
fices gladly and did not know them to be such. 
Women are often like that. If the beneficiaries 
accepted the gifts as a matter of course and 
without appreciation of the life that was being 
given also, why, that was not unusual either. 
The human creature is often so. 

The years went on until five had passed since 
Miss Callista had seen the faces of her kin and 
the blue Vermont hills. At the beginning she 
had not dreamed that so long a time would 
elapse before she could return, but one thing 
io 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


and another had delayed her visit. The invalid 
sister had needed so many things. The malady 
made inroads and delicacies were wanted to 
keep up her strength; medicines, too, and the 
doctor must be paid. Once a famous specialist 
came up from Boston to see her, and that cost 
money. This fifth winter just ended had been 
spent by the ailing one in Florida, but she was 
now at home again, and a turn of fortune in the 
shape of a railroad rate war made it suddenly 
possible for Miss Callista to go to see her and 
the dear mother. The cost of travel, the rival 
passenger agents declared, was less than that of 
staying at home. So, the spring term having 
just ended, she joyfully went her way. 

She was in time for the end. Though it was 
early June and the sun shone with torrid strength 
on the Honeyport prairie, and the roses were in 
bloom, it was not so surely summer but that a 
wintry blast swept down from the north through 
the Vermont valleys and undid all the healing 
wrought by the Florida airs. The ailing sister 
was cut down as a lily by the frost. She died 
in Miss Callista’s arms — faithful arms that had 
scarce time to rest before they held the mother’s 
weary form while her soul breathed itself away. 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


The mother had lived for the stricken daughter, 
and that beloved life ended, she, too, was done 
with earth. 

The summer vacation was not over when Miss 
Callista came back to Honeyport. The charm 
of her childhood’s home was gone. Later in 
life the glamour of the mountains would come 
back to her and her heart would yearn for a sight 
of them, but now they chilled her and she was 
glad to return to the once despised village on the 
Wabash, with the unbroken, shadowless land- 
scape and the level horizon. Out of the old home 
life were left only memories and a few household 
gods. When some of these treasures were un- 
loaded at the door of her Indiana home — a 
heavy oaken secretary, a spindle-legged table, a 
straight-backed, comfortless-looking chair — the 
men who lifted them into place wondered that 
she went to the expense of shipping such old- 
fashioned furnishings when she might have 
bought finer ones at home for less money. But 
the women who saw them did not wonder — 
women who had found for themselves how the 
heart clings to inanimate things when they alone 
are left to speak of the dead. 

So Miss Callista, permanently transplanted, 
12 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


settled down in a bit of a cottage next to the 
Presbyterian parsonage, still occupied by her 
friends, the Evanses, and resumed her occupa- 
tion of teaching. There was no one now to 
save for and deny herself for, but, being an un- 
selfish creature, this only brought her pain. 
Nevertheless, as time went on life grew more 
comfortable for her. She indulged in an occa- 
sional bit of finery ; now and then she went on 
an excursion somewhere. Once she went to In- 
dianapolis to attend the state fair, and once she 
went to Chicago and came back dizzy and be- 
wildered, glad to be in the quiet home away from 
the busy whirl. 

The years went on until more than fifteen 
had passed since she set foot on Hoosier soil. 
All this time she had not escaped the specula- 
tions all normally constituted people are bound 
to indulge in concerning the matrimonial pros- 
pects of their spinster friends. It was assumed 
that she was not only ready, but anxious to 
marry when the opportunity and the man offered, 
and kindly neighbors kept a lookout for both. 
Miss Callista alone seemed indifferent. Appar- 
ently she took no thought of such possibilities. 
She was polite in a sedate way to the occasional 
13 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


marriageable men who showed a disposition to 
hover around her, but she gave encouragement 
to none. Her Honeyport friends suspected that 
she had wasted her heart on some unapprecia- 
tive Vermont Yankee, but this was not the case. 

The truth was that the marriageable male beings 
who had come within her range of possibilities 
had not been quite to her liking. The farmers 
who constituted the most of these eligibles were 
too rough and careless in dress, too much given 
to tobacco chewing and too loudly hilarious in 
their conversation to please her somewhat fas- 
tidious taste. She may not have cherished a 
definite ideal of the man who would meet her 
requirements, but she had a clear conception of 
what would not do. So the years had gone 
swiftly by, bringing few changes in the routine 
of her life, or even in her appearance. She was 
a plump and comely body, and in some respects 
more attractive than in her younger days, for 
lines of care and anxiety and homesickness had 
given way to placid contentment in her work 
and in every-day affairs. She looked forward 
to no change in her mode of life or her experi- 
ences, but, as so often happens when change 
comes into an uneventful existence, it comes un- 
14 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


expectedly and creates a complete transforma- 
tion in the little world. 

Mrs. Evans, still her nearest neighbor and 
closest friend, fell ill and came swiftly down to 
death’s door. Before she passed through she 
said to Miss Callista, who was her faithful at- 
tendant : 

“When I am gone Calvin will marry again 
after a proper time. He will; oh, yes. It is a 
man’s way, and it will be Calvin’s way. He 
will need somebody to look after him. I want 
you to be the one, and I have told him so. You 
will know how and will do for him as I would.” 

This was said gaspingly between paroxysms 
of pain, but with all the firmness and decision 
for which Mrs. Evans was noted when at her 
best estate. It was the supreme proof of a 
woman’s faith in another that she could put her 
husband into her keeping, and, having given it, 
she closed her eyes and opened them no more. 

This last communication made a powerful im- 
pression on Miss Callista. It was a startling 
surprise, but she accepted it unquestioningly as 
a guide to her future. 

What Mrs. Evans wanted Mr. Evans to do had 
always been done, and she had not the faintest 
15 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


doubt that he would follow his wife’s instruc- 
tions in this, as he had been accustomed to do 
in all other matters. 

She grieved for her friend’s death, but almost 
insensibly she began to adjust herself to coming 
conditions. The bereaved man assumed the 
conventional appearance of gentle melancholy 
by which the newly-made widower is so easily 
recognized, and his earliest sermons had a ten- 
derly pathetic tone that she, in common with 
the other women of the congregation, considered 
very touching and appropriate. But even in 
this sacred stage of his widowerhood she felt 
herself looking upon him with a new interest and 
a secret sense of possession. She had been 
brought up to revere ministers as a class, and 
had always had a respectful regard for Mr. Ev- 
ans because of his profession and because he had 
been kind to her. He was not her ideal of 
manly beauty, being gaunt of frame and bald of 
head ; moreover, he was twenty years older than 
she, being nearly sixty. However, she recog- 
nized the fact that it was not for her to make age 
a barrier, since no widower of sixty was likely 
to consider himself other than desirable even to 
a maid of twenty. 


16 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


She also confessed to herself that she had 
always considered the wife of a minister blessed 
among women, and that, while she had never 
hoped to marry one, the sudden and unex- 
pected prospect of doing so was very agree- 
able indeed. She felt herself fitted to the labor 
of smoothing life’s pathway for a servant of 
the Lord. Not that she could assist in sermon- 
writing, as she had suspected the first Mrs. Ev- 
ans of doing, but she could minister to his com- 
fort in a more material way. She could take 
household cares from his shoulders; she could 
make him presentable to the public ; she could 
keep him posted on many ins and outs of the 
parish; above all, she could feed him well, and 
she held that of all men ministers needed to be 
well fed. She considered it a reasonable propo- 
sition that a man could administer a far higher 
degree of spiritual consolation to his flock when 
his stomach was comfortably filled than when it 
was empty or dyspeptic from poor food. 

The very church building began to take on a 
new aspect. She saw that it needed a new car- 
pet and a coat of paint, and her mind leaped 
forward to the time when, as minister’s wife, she 
could have an influence in bringing such im- 
2 1 7 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


provements about. But she kept all such 
thoughts concealed in her own heart. Her 
manner toward her pastor was more sedate and 
dignified than ever. The knowledge imparted 
by her deceased friend had given her a self-con- 
sciousness which put an end to the little neigh- 
borly attentions she had been accustomed to of- 
fer when the wife was alive, such as sending 
over a favorite dish, or now and then an em- 
broidered handkerchief, or even taking his hose 
from the mending basket and darning them in 
the highest style of the art. Now, she thought, 
such things would “make talk” — dreadful bug- 
bear of lone women — and she left Mr. Evans 
entirely to the mercies of Nancy, his inefficient 
and elderly serving woman, and to other female 
parishioners who, with husbands to approve 
their actions, might safely venture where she 
could not tread. 

It was the more easy to give up her accus- 
tomed service in her reverend neighbor’s house 
from the fact that her spare hours were now 
largely devoted to the entertainment of the Lit- 
tledale twins — the three-year-old children of the 
Rev. Amos Littledale, the Campbellite minister, 
who lived across the street. 

18 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


Miss Callista’s animosity to the Campbellites 
had in no wise abated, and was generally under- 
stood in the community, but the feeling was di- 
rected to them as a sect and not as individuals. 
Certainly, it did not include the babies, especially 
such sweet and attractive ones as these. Long 
before their mother died, several months back, 
her heart had gone out to those twins, and when 
they manifested a fondness for her, based though 
she knew it was on her supply of buns and cook- 
ies, she became their devoted friend. She had 
once confided to Mrs. Evans, with a maidenly 
blush, that if she had been married and the 
Lord had seen fit to bless her with children, she 
would have liked twins. 

Mr. Littledale’s young sister was his house- 
keeper and guardian of the babies, and Miss 
Callista, seeing that the burden of care was 
heavy for the girl, cheerfully relieved and 
aided her in many ways. It would do no 
harm to make the young things happy while 
it could be done, she thought. “It wasn’t at all 
likely they would have much chance to be hap- 
py if their father married that flirty young Mat- 
tie Stone, over on the West pike, as seemed 
likely. Strange that a man couldn’t show bet- 
19 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


ter judgment when he married, especially when 
he took a second partner. There was Mr. Lit- 
tledale, all of thirty-one, or maybe thirty-two 
years old, and Mat Stone wasn’t over twenty, 
and a giddy piece, too. There was Jane Em- 
bree, steady and settled, and of a suitable age, 
and willing, and he never so much as looked her 
way. But law sakes, what could you expect of 
a man and a preacher at that, in a church that 
had the hull New Testament for its creed and no 
confession of faith and no definite thing you 
could get at to tell what the members did be- 
lieve, or why they couldn’t be just plain Baptists, 
or even Methodists or Presbyterians, who will im- 
merse you if you insist on it?” 

But, with all her absorption in the infants Miss 
Callista did not fail to keep a watchful eye on 
Widower Evans. She was a woman and not un- 
observant, and had therefore not failed to note 
the peculiarities of widowers. She knew at about 
what period deepest grief began to lift its clouds 
and life present some attractions once more ; it 
was a very early period in a majority of cases. 
She could invariably detect the first indications 
that the bereaved one was ‘ ‘able to take notice, ’ ’ 
as cynical old ladies have it; she knew well the 
20 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


signs that he was not only contemplating further 
matrimonial possibilities in a general way, but 
also when he had ceased to generalize and had 
fixed his eye upon a concrete individual as a de- 
sirable consoler. She saw Mr. Evans emerge 
into the first of these stages, her proximity as 
next-door neighbor being a point of vantage. 
He shaved oftener than he had been accustomed 
to doing; he buttoned his frock coat when he 
went out, instead of allowing it to hang open in 
a saggy, slovenly way; he carried himself more 
erectly, and with almost a jaunty air. Before 
his best coat was in the least shiny he began to 
wear it every day, and bought a new one for 
Sundays. 

Miss Callista observed this piece of extrava- 
gance with a thrill ; it was significant of imme- 
diate activity in the matrimonial field. It was 
barely six months since Mrs. Evans had died, 
but her expectant successor considered it prob- 
able that he would wish to marry as soon as the 
conventional year of mourning had expired, and 
it was a matter of course that the necessary pre- 
liminaries should be arranged before that date. 

Almost unconsciously she began to preen her- 
self like a little bird in the spring. Her brown 


21 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


hair waved with an extra crinkle ; she put a 
fresh bow on her summer bonnet and wore a 
pink ribbon at her throat where brown had been. 
People said how young Miss Callista looked and 
how well she “held her age.” They also be- 
gan to say what a suitable wife she would make 
for Mr. Evans; some of them, in the free- 
spoken rural way, said it to her, and made her 
blush and try to look angry. But they began 
to say, too, that Mr. Evans seemed to be look- 
ing with a favorable eye upon the Widow Jack- 
son, out on West Main street. He had been 
seen to walk home with her from prayer- meet- 
ing, and he dropped in with what some con- 
sidered needless frequency to administer spiritual 
consolation to the widow’s son, who was in the 
last stages of what was known as “decline.” 

This information gave Miss Callista a shock. 
Could it be possible, she asked herself, that he 
was about to disregard his wife’s dying injunc- 
tion? He showed no indications of any leaning 
in her direction, save that he had come over 
once or twice in a neighborly way, and when 
other neighbors were present, to sit on her little 
porch and chat in the twilight. But he had 
never walked home with her from prayer-meet- 
22 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


ing, though she attended regularly and it was 
right in his way. She cogitated over the matter 
a good deal, and as a result of her reflections 
decided upon what she considered a bold move 
and a counter attraction to the widow’s bland- 
ishments. She resolved to invite him to supper, 
no matter if folks did say she was setting her 
cap for him. She wasn’t doing anything of the 
kind, and she wasn’t anyways anxious, she said 
to herself, to marry him, but something was 
due to her friend Mrs. Evans; and certainly that 
lady would not approve of Mrs. Jackson. And 
what a poor figure she would cut at the head of 
the missionary society and the sewing circle, 
sure enough! Perhaps, it was her (Miss Cal- 
lista’s) duty gently to remind him of his late 
partner’s wishes. So she spent the most of one 
Saturday afternoon in concocting the preacher’s 
favorite dishes, and when they were ready to 
serve, stepped to the back fence, and, in a 
casual way, as if it were a sudden thought, 
asked him to come over and have a bit of sup- 
per. She said, she knew Nancy had gone to 
see her folks, and she thought he might enjoy a 
cup of tea and something warm instead of a cold 
bite by himself. 


23 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


He came with alacrity, and was presently 
installed at the table with Miss Callista op- 
posite and a Littledale twin at each side of her. 
It had seemed to her that the presence of the 
twins would at once preserve the proprieties 
and offer no barrier to confidential conversa- 
tion. The babies behaved like little angels, 
but there was no conversation that all the 
world might not have heard. She plied her 
guest with fried chicken, with the lightest of 
rolls, with strawberry shortcake and with his 
favorite temperance tipple of diluted blackberry 
cordial, put up by her own hands the year be- 
fore. He ate heartily and joyously, and made 
a variety of facetious remarks to the twins, but 
he went home without so much as a look indi- 
cating a thought of his wife’s sacred injunction. 

Miss Callista did not like it. She took the 
twins to their gate and kissed them good-night 
with an abruptness and irritation of manner 
hitherto unknown to them. She was beginning 
to have a little resentment on her own account 
as well as on that of the departed Mrs. Evans, 
whose request was being ignored. Her vanity 
was touched. Queer taste a man had, she 
thought, who could see anything in that Widow 
24 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


Jackson better than he saw in her; and every- 
body knew the widow couldn’t cook a decent 
meal to save her life. 

Miss Callista was modest, but no woman is so 
unduly self-depreciating that she does not se- 
cretly recognize her own superiority to certain 
other women. 

But the supper did have its effect, after all, 
for during the weeks following Mr. Evans fell 
into the way of walking home with Miss Cal- 
lista after Sunday evening service and of coming 
oftener to sit on her porch in the dusk. But he 
did not discontinue his visits to the widow. The 
situation was quite interesting to the parishion- 
ers and the village gossips, and people began to 
take sides. The women discussed the matter 
over the back fences, and the men who sat 
around the grocery stores wagered small sums 
on the outcome. 

One day in August Miss Callista was surprised 
by the receipt of a letter. It was from Mr. 
Evans, who had been spending a week or so 
with a sister in Lafayette. It read thus : 

“ Miss Callista — Esteemed Friend: I take this means 
of addressing you in regard to an important matter. When 
my lamented Jane was in her last illness, she foresaw that 

25 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


I should find the burden of loneliness too great to bear, and 
she advised me to marry again after a proper time had 
passed, and strongly recommended you as a suitable part- 
ner. Indeed, she was so urgent that she exacted a promise 
that I would follow her advice. At that time I was much 
agitated and distressed, and scarcely knew what I was 
saying, but since I have recently come to reflect upon the 
matter it has seemed to me that her views were very 
judicious. The time is near when I can, without re- 
proach, enter again into the marriage state, and for many 
reasons it seems expedient for me to do so. Inasmuch 
as you were on terms of close friendship with my dear 
Jane, and will doubtless desire, as I do, to carry out her 
wishes as far as possible in all respects, I ask your con- 
sideration of the matter in hand. As my wife you can 
greatly increase your field of usefulness, and I feel assured 
that the Lord will fit your strength to the new duties and 
responsibilities. I write this in order to prepare your 
mind. I shall return to-morrow and will call on you, 
when we can discuss the subject in all its bearings. 

“ Y ours in the Lord, 

“Calvin H. Evans.” 

Miss Callista read this epistle several times. 
At first she experienced a sense of triumph and 
elation. There was no longer any doubt about 
the matter. She, and not the Widow Jackson, 
had won the prize. On the second reading she 
added the comment, “if he is a prize.’ ’ The 
third time red spots began to grow on her 


26 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


cheeks, and she talked to herself as people who 
live alone are apt to do. 

“He talks as if he were asking me to marry 
him all on his first wife’s account, and had no 
special interest in the matter himself. Mrs. 
Evans was a good woman, but another woman 
wants some better reason for marrying the wid- 
ower than that. And then he doesn’t out and 
out ask me to marry him ; jest takes it for 
granted that I will jump at the chance once my 
mind is prepared. Conceited old thing, if he is 
a preacher. He seems to have some doubt, 
too, of my being equal to the new duties, and 
— and he never even says he likes me or will 
try to make me happy, or anything. A woman, 
even if she is going to be a second wife and isn’t 
as young as she was, wants a little love-making 
on her own account.” 

Miss Callista did not reflect, or perhaps did 
not know, that men to whom it is not given to 
be sentimental and affectionate on paper are 
sometimes most eloquent of speech in the tender 
cause. She continued to cherish resentment, 
but, nevertheless, went about preparing green 
corn fritters incase the parson should happen in 
about supper time. 


27 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


The twins happened in, as they were wont to 
do whenever they found the gates unfastened, 
and after them presently came their father osten- 
sibly in search of the truants. He had come 
so often on the same errand that he was quite at 
home, and detected at once Miss Callista’s ap- 
pearance of irritation, for there was a dangerous 
sparkle in her usually mild eyes. 

“Have the children worried you? I will take 
them home at once,” he said. 

“Worry me — those dear babies? No, indeed; 
they couldn’t do that. Older people than they 
are the ones who worry.” 

Rev. Mr. Littledale might have made a repu- 
tation in the legal profession, he had such a 
knack of getting the information he wanted by 
skillful but apparently purposeless questioning. 
Miss Callista had no intention of telling about 
Mr. Evans’s proposal, or, more accurately, his 
proposition, but she was full of the subject, and 
presently sat down on the sofa in the cool lit- 
tle parlor, the twins promptly climbing up and sit- 
ting one on each side with their arms about her. 

“What would you think, Mr. Littledale, of a 
man who would ask a woman to be his second 
wife just because he thought it would please his 
28 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


first wife? I know — I know a lady — I have 
heard of a case of the kind.” 

Mr. Littledale was shrewd. He had had his 
eye on Mr. Evans, and needed to know no more. 

“Miss Callista,” said he promptly and with 
shameless disregard of the other man’s possible 
claims, “Miss Callista, such a man isn’t worth 
thinking about. He’s a selfish wretch, and no 
woman could be happy with him. A second 
wife deserves as much consideration as the first, 
and on her own account, too. And while we 
are talking about marrying, Miss Callista, shall 
I tell you what I have been wanting to say for 
some time? I want you for my wife. I love 
you, Miss Callista; the twins love you ; won’t 
you come to us?” 

The twins , cherubic creatures , promptly echoed , 
“ Love oo, Miss C’lista,” and proceeded to em- 
brace her, but were dispossessed by their parent. 

Miss Callista was taken completely by sur- 
prise, but this variety of surprise never wholly 
disconcerts the most timid of women. She 
thought rapidly for a moment. 

“There! Mr. Littledale ’s been dropping in 
all summer, staying to supper and making him- 
self at home generally, and I never thought any- 

29 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


thing of it, because he’s younger than I be; 
and, besides, I s’posed he was engaged to that 
Stone girl. Folks will say I tried to catch him.” 

Like a flash, too, came the thought: “ If I 
say yes, Mr. Evans will have to look somewhere 
else, and I don’t care if he does. I never made 
any promise to Jane. The Widow Jackson can 
have him.” 

What Miss Callista said was: “Why, Mr. 
Littledale, I’m seven years older than you be, 
and — and I’m a Presbyterian.” 

“What do a few years matter? We won’t 
count them,” was the reply. “And I’m sure 
I have nothing against Presbyterians. If you 
mean that I’m a Campbellite, why, please try 
to forgive me.” 

Evidently he received forgiveness, for when 
Mr. Evans arrived that evening he found Mr. 
Littledale sitting with Miss Callista on the vine- 
covered porch, and the corn fritters had all been 
eaten. The new condition of affairs was gently 
disclosed to him by his successful rival, and he 
was perceptibly discomfited. He had, perhaps, 
not valued Miss Callista at her true worth while 
he considered her his for the asking, but now 
that another man had taken her from him she 
30 


AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 


suddenly seemed highly desirable. Possibly 
the discovery of Rev. Evans’s designs may have 
inspired Mr. Littledale to unpremeditated action, 
but this is only a surmise. It is the way of man 
to be so influenced. Mr. Evans made but a 
short call, and when he entered his own home 
the door was heard to slam with what seemed 
unnecessary violence. 

But the Presbyterian pastor was not inconso- 
lable. The very next evening he walked home 
with the widow Jackson from prayer-meeting 
and stayed till io o’clock. The morning after, 
the widow, under strict injunction of secrecy, 
told Deacon Todd’s wife of her engagement, 
and by night the whole town knew of it. 

Miss Callista also confided in Mrs. Todd. 

“I never would have supposed that I’d marry 
a Campbellite, that is, a Disciple — never, or 
that I’d be one myself. Of course, a minister’s 
wife ought, in all decency, to belong to his 
church, and, of course, I will. I ought to be 
able to accept the doctern if it’s the hull New 
Testament, as they say. And there! I’ll have 
to be immersed, too, I s’pose. I hadn’t thought 
of that ; but I guess I can stand it to go through 
water, or fire either, for them blessed twins.” 

31 


AT A WAY-STATION 

T HIRTY years ago a certain railroad in In- 
diana was new enough to be still a source of 
deep interest and curiosity to the people of the 
sparsely-settled region through which it passed. 
They had not yet ceased to gather at the stations, 
morning and evening, to see the “down train” 
and the “up train.” The projectors of this 
thoroughfare, having in view, perhaps, legisla- 
tive appropriations and private subscriptions of 
stock, had artfully led the public to think that a 
farming country of marvelous richness was suf- 
fering for an outlet; that passengers and produce 
impatiently waited to crowd its cars. So im- 
pressed were guileless citizens with this idea that 
only a brave man or a fool would have dared to 
say: “Goto! We need no railroad.” Thus 
far in the existence of the road the great rush of 
travel and traffic had not begun ; in the mean- 
32 


AT A WAY-STATION 


time, one train daily each way was found enough 
for all needs. 

Few among the rural population along the 
route ever went from home; fewer still ex- 
pected visitors. Yet they went regularly to 
see the engine and the gayly painted cars ; they 
indulged in wild speculations as to the probable 
business and destination of the travelers of whom 
they caught glimpses. The occasional stranger 
who stopped at any village was confronted on 
the platform by groups of men in blue or butter- 
nut jeans, all chewing tobacco and expectorat- 
ing profusely. He passed women in lank calico 
dresses and limp calico sunbonnets — some old 
and wrinkled, some young enough to be pretty, 
but, with rare exceptions, hopelessly plain. Even 
the dull-eyed babies, in their mothers’ arms, 
lacked the charm of health and wholesomeness. 
If the traveler chanced to wonder how one woman, 
with an expanse of toothless gums, could endure 
to smile, he might marvel that the next one ap- 
peared in public before having her unsightly 
teeth removed. And while he considered the 
sad effect of quinine, soda and tobacco on human 
beauty, he would have been amazed had he 
known the curiosity his own person excited. 
3 33 


AT A WAY-STATION 


“Who is he?” “Where does he live at?” 
“What brings him down this away?” “How 
long will he stay?” were questions eagerly dis- 
cussed. 

The railroad had given them something to 
think about. Do you know what that means, 
you who have never lived in the country, remote 
from a business center? It means that the resi- 
dents, having little outside interest, few books, 
perhaps no newspapers (there are such places 
yet), have narrowed their lives down until fresh 
subjects for thought and conversation are rare. 
They have talked about each other, about the 
crops, the calves, the pigs and the weather, until 
each man knows what another is going to say 
while he is yet afar off. Any unusual event, a 
death, an elopement, a fire, is seized upon, talked 
about from every point of view, turned to every 
light, over and over, until each thread and shred 
of the story is worn with age. Finally, it seems 
to die away, but suddenly revives, and passes on 
its round until set aside by something equally 
startling. Think, then, of the vast store of en- 
tertainment afforded by a railroad ! 

On this October evening, thirty years ago, 
the echoing scream of the locomotive, strange to 
34 


AT A WAY-STATION 


say, did not draw out the usual number of idlers 
to gape, open-mouthed, as the train halted, 
then passed on. More strange still, many pas- 
sengers alighted at each stopping place — the na- 
tives, themselves, returning home with the air of 
adventurers, breathing sighs of relief, too, as of 
having safely accomplished a perilous journey. 
Capacious lunch-baskets, as well as certain addi- 
tions to their every-day attire — wide hoop- 
skirts on the women, shirt-collars on the men, 
for example — suggested that some sort of festiv- 
ities had been indulged in. 

As the excursionists lingered, reluctant to go 
while anything remained to be seen, their last 
glances turned from the long line of crowded pas- 
senger coaches to a baggage-car with the doors 
tightly closed, and a curious hush fell on them as 
it rolled by. What did it mean? A “through 
passenger,” in search of knowledge, found the 
path an easy one. The long, lean man at his side, 
with sunburned, straggling beard and a mouth 
like a cavern, was full of information. “Political 
meetin’ ! Lord, no ! ’Lections stirs a feller up 
some, but there ain’t ary stump-speaker in In- 
diana ’at kin fetch sech an all-fired big crowd as 
out to Newburg to-day. Hangin’ yo’ 
35 


was 


AT A WAY-STATION 


know — Bill Murdock's. Hain't heard about 
him? Reckon yo’ cain’t live 'round hyer, any- 
wheres, or yo'd a knowed the peticklers. Been 
a powerful sight o’ talk about it, fust an’ last. 
Yo’ see ’t happened 'bout this hyer way: Bill, 
he tuck a notion one night, nigh two months ago 
now, ’at he’d go down to the Corners to Gim- 
ble’s an’ get some ten-penny nails. 

“He was a-workin’ old Carter’s farm on the 
sheers an’ lived up there, full two mile from the 
Corners. His wife was a finicky little critter, 
with a mite of a baby, an’ 'peared like she had 
a warnin’ o’ some kind, for she done her best to 
coax him to stay to home. But go he would, 
though what he wanted with them nails jest at 
that time, more 'an a pin with two heads, no 
one could ever make out. After he’d bought 
’em an’ talked with the fellers in the store a bit 
— mebbe had a drink or two in the back room 
— in come Jake Jillson. Jake was a airy sort o’ 
chap — could afford to be, ’cause his father ’d 
left him one o’ the best farms in the township, 
an’ he was beholden to nobody. Well, there’d 
been some old grutch atween him an’ Bill — no 
one knows zackly what. Some says Jake had 
courted Bill’s wife in times past, an’ that she 
36 


AT A WAY-STATION 


throwed him over; but I don’t reckon that was 
it. Jake was married two years afore Bill was, 
an’ taint no ways likely ’at a female woman ’u’d 
give a well-to-do feller like Jake the go-by an’ 
take up with a pore man like Bill. They’re too 
long-headed, women be. ’T any rate, however 
’twas, the two soon come to a quarrel. Nobody 
’at heard ’em seems to agree jest how it was. 
Jake he was aggravatin’ an’ kep’ anaggin’. Bill 
allays was high-tempered, an’ fore anyone seen 
’at they was really in airnest, Bill he was chasin’ 
of Jake over the boxes an’ bar’ls. It was on’y 
a minute afore he ketched him an’ hit him. The 
breath was knocked out o’ Jake for good an’ all 
with that air very pound o’ ten-penny nails. 

* ‘Jerusalem ! What a racket it raised ! After 
the folks come to their senses like, they got the 
sheriff an’ a posse o’ constables an’ scoured 
around the country right smart of a spell huntin’ 
Bill, afore they thought o’ going to his house. 
At last they went there an’ found him a-walkin’ 
the floor with his baby. He was teetotally 
wropped up in that woman an’ young un o’ his, 
but sick baby or not he was drug off to jail, 
an’ not a minute too soon. A lot o’ men in 
masks came a-gallopin’ down, an’ would a’ made 
37 


AT A WAY-STATION 


short work o’ him if he’d been there. No, I 
don’t know who they were, an’ ef I did, ’twould 
be safe fer to keep my mouth shet. These hyer 
things hev to be looked after now an’ then — the 
law bein’ so slow an’ oncertain. Wasn’t much 
time lost, though, on this case. The jury 
wouldn’t a’ dared to a’ brought in ary other 
verdict than guilty, considerin’ how many rich 
relations Jake had scattered about this county. 
They’d made it mighty lively for ary juryman 
’at would vote to clear his murderer. An’ so 
Bill, bein’, as I said, a pore man, with no friends 
to help him, had no show, an’ had to swing. 
’Twas all right, I reckon; somebody has to be 
made a example of. 

“Me an’ Mandy — that’s her in the red caliker 
a settin’ over yonder — ’lowed we’d go up to 
Newburg to-day, where the hangin’ was at. 
Hadn’t ary one of us ever saw a man hung, an’ 
she hadn’t never been on the steam kyars. I 
hadn’t no notion o’ takin’ the boys, but Mandy, 
she says, ‘Lawsy, let ’em go, it’ll be a warnin’ 
to ’em to behave theirselves when they’ve 
growed up.’ So we all went. An’ jeminey! 
what a crowd ! Best part o’ two counties there, 
I reckon.” 


38 


AT A WAY-STATION 


After a pause, during which the long, lean 
man ejected tobacco juice vigorously across the 
traveler into the aisle, he added reflectively: 
“A circus, I’m free to say, would a’ been more 
to my taste, but it wouldn’t a’ been so im- 
provin’ to the community. Elder Borum says 
circuses are corrupt an’ a snare o’ the devil.” 

Another pause and more tobacco. 

“The — the — deceased is on a kyar back o’ 
this hyer.” 

Just then the train quivered, slackened, 
stopped where a lonely country road crossed the 
track; not a human being, not a house in sight 
— only a platform and a pile of walnut lumber 
to hide the long, straight, western horizon be- 
yond miles and miles of “rolling” country. In 
the summer, perhaps, it might have a certain 
beauty; in the dusk of this autumn day it was 
desolation.* Toward the north a grove of girdled 
trees waved white, ghostly arms; rain had 
fallen and the gray earth, the heavy sky alike 
seemed sodden. The long gray and black 
curves of the wagon-track wound in and out like 
a huge serpent crawling over the earth. 

Out upon the platform was helped from the 
baggage-car a young, slender woman with a 
39 


AT A WAY-STATION 


baby in her arms — a woman in whose eyes was 
no longer hope, were no more tears. 

After her was lifted a pine coffin roughly 
stained. The men who had touched her gently 
were less tender of this other burden. They 
dropped it with a jar that brought a little cry of 
pain from the woman’s lips. She sank down 
and placed her hand upon the box as if to shield 
from harm that which was within. The child 
upon her lap stared solemnly at the sky. The 
engine shrieked fiercely as if in haste to go, then 
rushed on, leaving her with her dead and her 
despair. 

Curious passengers, looking back from a bend 
in the road, saw her crouching motionless, while 
a last red gleam from the setting sun broke 
through the clouds and touched her with a 
weird light. 

Around a curve of serpentine highway they 
saw, too, a country wagon, the driver an old 
man with bent head, the horses slow and spirit- 
less. Then the train swept on out of sight. 

Not a pleasant story, do you say? 

No, yet “ ’tis true, ’tis pity.” It is one of 
those dark threads so common in the weft of life 
that, to our short-sighted eyes, mar the pattern 
40 


AT A WAY-STATION 


that else might be so fair. We even doubt the 
wisdom of the Weaver who permits such de- 
fects, such shadows to hide the clearer outlines 
of the web. As if we knew His designs ! 

Do you wish to hear the sequel — to follow to 
an end the twisted thread that seems to have 
crossed and tangled uselessly in the loom of 
fate? 

The mother, who was left with her child at 
the lonely station, would have been glad to die, 
no doubt; but, for the sake of the babe, she 
must live on. She was one of those timid, 
clinging creatures such as all women are ex- 
horted to become. Masculine wisdom says the 
manifest destiny of such a one is to be a wife 
and mother ; the same sagacity neglects to go 
further and provide for her helplessness when 
destiny fails her. But these two lived, and 
the child grew and thrived. How they lived 
only a woman, poor and alone, who toils for 
her children, day and night, can tell. This 
mother, like the rest, worked early and late at 
anything her hands could find to do. She 
sewed, she washed, she nursed the sick, she 
drudged for the farmers’ wives in busy seasons. 
Hours when she should have slept were spent 
41 


AT A WAY-STATION 


in making the scanty garments of baby Nancy. 
Little sympathy was manifested for her, though 
doubtless more was felt than found expression ; 
the American farmer is not demonstrative. She 
did not ask for pity, and no one saw her weep. 
The neighbors said “Mrs. Murdock bore up 
right well under her man’s takin’ off; lucky ’at 
she was one o’ them kind ’at didn’t have no 
deep feelin’s.” 

Not so with the other widow. Mrs. Jillson’s 
display of grief was loud and violent. Never 
was woman so cruelly bereaved, she said. She 
knew she could not live. If there were no Mur- 
docks on the face of the earth she should die 
easier; she could grind them to powder herself. 
“What right had that sly, deceitful hussy to be 
alive? Not a bit of doubt she worked Bill up 
to the murder. Jealous, you see, because Jake 
looked at her once before he knew me.” 

Before long, however, her excessive sorrow 
moderated. She allowed herself to think favora- 
bly of life once more. Hysterics and “sinking 
spells” grew less frequent. In less than a year 
she married again — entirely on her son’s ac- 
count, she told her friends. “A lone widow 
woman couldn’t rightly bring up a boy.” 

42 


AT A WAY-STATION 


Mrs. Murdock’s feelings toward the family of 
her husband’s victim were curious. For them 
she cared nothing, but for “Billy’s sake’’ she 
cherished a strong desire, a feverish anxiety to do 
them some service. Had she been of the Roman 
Catholic instead of the Methodist faith she 
would have starved herself, if need be, to pay 
for masses for the repose of his soul. As it was, 
ministers of the gospel — well-meaning men — 
who had “labored and prayed” with Murdock 
before his execution, told her that he had re- 
fused the means of grace. While admitting 
regret for the crime committed, he had declared 
that he did not love God ; that he knew nothing 
about Him. “When yo’ talk, Elder, about lov- 
in’,” he would say, “I could sense yore 
meanin' mighty well ef y o’ was a p’ intin’ at my 
woman an’ the little chickabiddy. Them’s all 
I’ve got ary love fer in this hyer world. I nev- 
er knowed the Lord here, an’ ef it depends upon 
my believin’ in an’ lovin’ of Him now, I reckon 
I shan’t know Him in the next place. ’ 1 With 
which grim statement the preachers were finally 
forced to silence. 

Being taken thus in the blackness of his sins, 
unconverted, of course he must pay the penalty 
43 


AT A WAY-STATION 


hereafter, they told the grieving wife. The pen- 
alty, she had always been taught and had un- 
doubtedly believed, was unspeakable torture 
forever and evermore. 

Now, in her extremity, she did as we all do 
when a creed is too narrow for our own special 
needs — she passed it by. Turning from that 
monument of human wisdom, she groped for a 
gate where hope was not shut out. 

4 ‘Billy must be punished, for he done a wick- 
ed thing, but he was not bad, he was not bad. 
I knowed him so well. He was always kind, 
on’y his temper quick — God must know that 
too, an’ surely, surely He can’t be hard on him 
always ’cause he lost control over his self jest 
once. Ef I could on’y do something for Mrs. 
Jillson, seems as if ’twould count for Billy some 
way. Ef she would let me work for her I 
might see some chance, but ’pears like she 
won’t let me come a-nigh.” 

Having no one else, she whispered her 
thoughts, her wishes to the little Nancy. In- 
stead of tender songs and baby talk, the child 
was lulled to sleep with stories of her father, 
with broken sobs and prayers. Who knows how 
early she became aware of a shadow upon her 
44 


AT A WAY-STATION 


life? How soon she was conscious of a differ- 
ence between herself and other children whom 
she saw? Her presence was only tolerated by 
the busy farmers’ wives because the mother 
could not leave her ; no noisy play, no mischiev- 
ous pranks were permitted or excused. 

The children of the poor and unfortunate learn 
self-control and self- repression at an early age. 
When Nancy was ten years old she was done 
with childhood. She could make herself useful 
in many ways to the women who wanted 
“help.” She could “earn her own living,” 
and talk gravely of a half day’s or a full day’s 
time. Her mother, perhaps feeling that she 
could do no more for her daughter, and having 
no other interest in life, let this world slip from 
her feeble hold, and went out over the border 
into the unknown. 

As she grew up, people were not often unkind 
to Nancy. On the contrary, they were usually 
friendly in a somewhat condescending way — 
when she did her work well. Had she been a 
timid, confiding creature, less self-reliant and 
reserved, no doubt they would have shown her 
many a favor that would have made her heart 
glad. As it was, the occasional rude taunts of 
45 


AT A WAY-STATION 


other children (what is more barbarous than a 
cruel child?) and now and then rough allusions 
to her father’s death by older people, raised in 
her nature the armor of silence and assumed in- 
difference. Withdrawing into herself, asking no 
help, she was allowed to go her way alone as 
best she could. So she toiled and served until 
she came to eighteen years of age. That time 
found her in the home of a farmer, twenty miles 
from her birthplace. 

Had you asked the girl if she were happy, 
she might have said yes. The farmer and 
his wife, who had no children, were kind to 
her. There was plenty of hard work, to be 
sure, but she had known nothing else. Met- 
aphysical questions had not troubled her; she 
had never asked herself if life were worth living, 
had accepted fate without rebellion. She had 
read no novels. Mr. Rhorer, the farmer, some- 
times asked her to read to him from The 
Weekly Reaper — “ types were so much littler’n 
they used to be, readin’ kind o’ made his head 
dizzy.” Nancy certainly might absorb facts, 
but not romance, from the able dissertations she 
spelled out upon the treatment of lambs, the 
weevil in wheat, or the advertisements of patent 
46 


AT A WAY-STATION 


churns. Even the household department of the 
paper did not develop artistic tastes. She had 
no colored tissue papers wherewith to construct 
lamp-mats. Why should she make elaborate 
frames of walnut shells or crooked sticks, when 
she had no pictures to put in them? 

An ignorant, uninteresting serving-maid, you 
see — very different from the aesthetic, cultured 
heroine, so popular nowadays. Yet this one 
was a woman, “with the heart and the hopes of 
a woman.” Hardly conscious, perhaps, that 
she had a heart, so long had it been starved. 
As in her childish days, she still held aloof from 
the young people, though, had she been so dis- 
posed, more than one young granger would 
have been glad to become her “beau,” for 
Nancy was fair to see. They were not so fas- 
tidious as to birth and family that her bright 
eyes might not have won them. 

The one small interest and excitement in 
Nancy’s life this summer was watching the even- 
ing passenger train. It stopped for a few mo- 
ments at a water station not far below the house, 
and there she waited, when her work was done, 
to catch a glimpse of the wonderful outside 
world, that she could see in no other way. Day 
4 7 


AT A WAY-STATION 


after day found her there, leaning against the 
old gate under a wide beech tree. She liked to 
look at the strange faces, and took deep interest in 
the variety of hats and bonnets, the only articles 
of apparel visible from her point of view. It 
puzzled her to guess where so many people 
could always be going. If she should ever go 
traveling she would not look so tired and cross 
as many of them did ; she was sure she would 
feel sorry, too, for girls who could only stand 
outside and see the cars go by. Once she saw 
a man carefully fasten a wrap around his wife’s 
throat, and heard words of tender anxiety for 
her comfort. She wondered vaguely if any one 
would ever care for her in that way ; it was not 
likely, she thought. Somehow she did not wish 
to stay that night until the train started. She 
was tired, and the hissing of the steam made 
her head ache. 

One day she became conscious that the young 
man who stood smoking a cigar on the back 
platform was the same one who was there yes- 
terday, perhaps the day before that. With eyes 
turned away she became aware, too, that he was 
looking at her with bold admiration — the subtle 


48 


AT A WAY-STATION 


magnetism, conveyed no scientists quite explain 
how, made her cheeks scarlet. 

What was there in a trifle like that to make 
her sleep that night less dreamless than before, 
in spite of sound health and weary young body? 

The next evening she went to the usual place. 
A little shyness about her now, but why should 
she stay away? She could not know that the 
young man would be there again ; but he was 
there, and this time lifted his hat and smiled at 
her. If Nancy lived to be an old woman, and 
never saw him again, he would stay in her mem- 
ory for that one act. She looked at it, not as 
an impertinence, but as a mark of respect. No 
man had ever lifted his hat to her before. The 
rustic beaux had not attained that touch of pol- 
ish, and would have sneered had they seen him, 
yet have envied him his style and city man- 
ners. 

The refined, accomplished lady of whom we 
like to read would not have been pleased with 
this young man. She would have seen a “ per- 
son” of twenty-one or twenty- two years of age 
with sandy hair and a jet black moustache. A 
penetrating odor of hair oil and cinnamon essence 
diffused itself about him. Wherever jewelry is 
4 49 


AT A WAY-STATION 


admissible in masculine outfit he had given it 
room — not expensive ornaments, perhaps, but 
large and showy. A hat worn upon one side of 
his head, a cigar carried in the opposite corner 
of his mouth, as if to balance the organ of brains, 
were peculiarities of his style. 

The thrill which filled poor Nancy with de- 
light would have been a shudder of disgust to 
our fastidious maiden. 

Poor Nancy? No. Something had entered 
into her days which made labor light and hours 
short. Only smiles and glances, but these may 
mean so much. Once he threw a kiss at her 
when no one else could see; she tried not to 
think of that except when by herself, for fear 
some one might guess her thoughts. 

One day her heart was set to fluttering, and 
her cheeks to burning when Mr. Rohrer brought 
the young man — yes, there could be no mistake 
— the same young man home to dinner with 
him. His name was Valentine Gipe. 

“My stepfather’s name, did you say, Mrs. 
Rhorer? Yes, I’ve always went by name of 

Gipe instead of .” (A door slammed and 

Nancy did not catch that.) “Live up at New- 
burg, with maw an’ paw. Maw, she’s that 
50 


AT A WAY-STATION 


wropped up in me she won’t hardly let me out 
of her sight. Am in business with Uncle Joe, 
down to the junction, an’ havin’ a free pass, it’s 
just as cheap to board at home, so I go up and 
down on the road every day. We’re dealin’ 
in stock right smart at present. Heard Mr. 
Rhorer had some fat cattle to sell, an’ have 
took a run up to see. Betcher boots I can’t be 
beat in jedgin’ the pints of a nanimal. Uncle 
Joe, he knows it, too; has dead loads o’ confi- 
dence in me.” 

It took a long time to buy those cattle. Mr. 
Gipe came and went, and came again. When 
one purchase was made another was talked of, 
and the summer was ended before the stock was 
sold. 

Long before that time Nancy’s heart was 
gone. All the love that other girls divide 
among friends and relatives was concentrated 
and lavished upon a creature who did not know 
what treasure was laid at his feet. He had 
nothing but empty words to give in return, was 
having a little fun, a little flirtation, he said to 
himself — but upon these words of love Nancy 
lived and was happy. The world took on a 
beauty she had never seen before. She won- 
51 


AT A WAY-STATION 


dered, as she sang at her work, that she had 
not noticed what a pretty blue was the sky, how 
bright were the sunsets; nothing in heaven, she 
thought, could be fairer than the moon-lit sum- 
mer nights. 

The light of her passion brightened every- 
thing. Even the gray, heavy face of her mis- 
tress was touched with a reflected glow. Hith- 
erto the girl had felt an unconscious pity for that 
worthy matron’s plainness. With feminine faith 
in beauty, she had wondered, idly, how Mr. 
Rhorer, himself no Adonis, could ever have mar- 
ried so unprepossessing a creature. Now she 
could see that the good woman might not have 
been so plain, after all, when young. 

Mrs. Rohrer saw nothing of the play that went 
on before her face. Not a whisper of the old, 
old story reached her dull ears. She had forgot- 
ten that she was young once ; she did not re- 
member that the blood of youth is riotous, its 
pulses swift and eager — not sluggish, as her own. 
The girl was “only Nancy.’’ Her mistress did 
not see that she was fair, did not dream that she 
had a want that was not supplied by herself. It 
never occurred to her that Valentine’s frequent 


52 


AT A WAY-STATION 


visits were for any one but her husband, because 
she knew . 

A part of what Mrs. Rhorer knew Nancy 
learned one day. Summer had gone then ; the 
first bleak weather of fall had come, and sitting 
by the kitchen fire, the prudent farmer’s wife 
began planning for the winter. “I wish to good- 
ness Dan’el an’ Val Gipe would finish up their 
trade about that last lot o’ cattle. We don’t 
want to winter them steers over. The young 
feller’s keen at a bargain, but powerful cautious. 
It’s jest as well, though, I s’pose, fer him to go 
slow an’ take care of his money, fer he’ll have 
a heap of it some day. His Uncle Joe’s an old 
bachelor, an’ most likely ’ll leave him all he’s 
got, an’ then his pap left him right smart of a 
lump.” 

“His pap dead? Why, child, didn’t I ever 
tell ye ’at Val’s pap was murdered when he 
was a baby? Gipe’s on’y his stepfather — J ill- 
son’s rightly his name. The man was hung who 
did the killin’. ’Member me and Dan’el was at 

the hangin’. Why! Bless my soul ! What 

ails the critter, a whiskin’ out thataway an’ 
slammin’ of the door? Is she — why lawsy, 
come to think, the man who was hung was her 
53 


AT A WAY-STATION 


pap, and I clean forgot it. Mighty touchy she 
is, to be sure, but I wouldn’t a’ said anything if 
I’d a’ thought. Was going to tell her about 
Val’s wedding that’s to come off next month. 
Wonder if we’ll get an invite.” 

Nancy’s mind was in a whirl. One thought 
only was clear. Val was coming that night. 
He would have “something particular” to tell 
her, he had said, and she, in her innocence, had 
blushed and thought of but one thing he could 
say. Now she must tell him this awful thing; 
of course he did not know it, and what would he 
say? Quite likely he could not marry her now, 
for his mother would never consent. But how 
could they live apart? 

With the simplicity of a woman who loves 
and knows nothing of coquetry or flirtation, 
she had accepted Val’s tender words with- 
out misgiving. That he had said nothing of 
marriage had not troubled her ; so far the 
love had been all-absorbing, without thought 
for the morrow. She had not doubted that 
he knew her history — “everybody did” — and 
mixed with her affection was a strong feel- 
ing of gratitude that he had not held aloof. She 
would care for him just the same, she knew, if 
54 


AT A WAY-STATION 


all his relatives were thieves and murderers, but 
this was different. Her early years had left a 
vivid impression on her mind of the relentless 
hatred of Mrs. Jillson to her mother and herself. 
It could hardly be hoped that time had made 
much change. If Val should ask his mother, 
perhaps — it might be — 

Like one dazed she went about her tasks. 
Would the day never end? How gray and cold 
it was ! The morning, she remembered, had 
been bright and clear. After supper she was 
sent to the cross-roads grocery, a mile and a half 
away, on some household errand. It grew dark 
early now, but she was not afraid. What was 
there to fear? She must hurry, though, to be 
back when Val came. It was nearer to go up 
the railroad than around by the turnpike, so 
she started home that way. It was a lonely 
walk even in the daylight, through dense woods 
and through deep cuts, but she thought only of 
the man she was hastening to meet. 

Suddenly in the darkest part of the road, 
where it made a short curve, she came upon an 
obstruction. Partly with eyes accustomed now 
to the darkness, partly by touch, she found logs 
and stones piled high across the track, 

55 


AT A WAY-STATION 


How they came there she did not stop to con- 
sider. Like a flash came the thought, “the 
evening express is due ; it will be wrecked and 
Val is on it.” One moment, then followed 
the thought and the deed for which she had 
lived her eighteen years. “If I can reach the 
water-station I can warn the engineer ; there is 
no other way. I shall save Val yet.” Softly 
she crept over the logs ; with swift feet she sped 
up the gloomy road, and thought not of the 
darkness. Like an illumination around her was 
the feeling ‘ ‘ My Val shall not die , I will save him . “ 
Swifter yet she ran — it was a mile or more . Once 
she fell; with her ear upon the ground she heard 
the vibrations of the coming train. Could she not 
go faster? On and on, past the woods, through 
the cornfields now — the stalks still standing 
breast-high after the western fashion. How the 
dry leaves rustled ! Her footsteps seemed to 
echo. Plainly now she heard the throbbing of 
the engine ; its fiery eye shone far up the road 
— there was yet time, she was nearly there. 
Louder sounded the thunder of the train, but 
above that and the beating of her heart she heard 
again the echoing steps. Some one followed 
her, called to her to halt, threatened her, but 
56 


AT A WAY-STATION 


still she ran faster, faster. A pistol shot, another, 
but she went on, staggering now. The train came 
thundering on, seeming in the gloom, like a de- 
stroying monster, stopped impatiently at the 
station, and Nancy dragged herself to the engi- 
neer’s cab. Her work was done. The creatures 
who, for malice or plunder, had planned the 
wreck were defeated, but had wreaked vengeance 
on her. 

On board that train were lives worth more 
than the one for which she had given her own — 
men for whom other women would have died, 
no doubt; wives and children for whom hearts 
would have broken had they come to their homes 
no more. She had saved these passengers from 
destruction, but her thoughts were only for one. 
“Val! my Val!” was her cry — maidenly shy- 
ness gone now in the solemn presence of death. 
To her it was as though they two were alone in 
all the world. When they carried her to the 
house the young man followed reluctantly. 

“I did it for you, Val. I know’d you’d be 
on the train. Seemed as if the Lord must let 
me get there in time. I kep’ askin’ Him over 
an’ over, an’ He did. I reckon it’s all up with 
me, though. This mornin’ I’d a been sorry, 
5 7 


AT A WAY-STATION 


but it’s just as well. You couldn't a married me, 
Val, a-knowin' who I be, an’ it don’t 'pear as if 
I could a-lived away from you. You’re all I’ve 
got. Mother’ll be glad ’at I did this. Mebbe 
it ’ll count for father, as she always was sayin’. 
Mebbe yer ma ’ll forgive us all now.” 

Valentine Jillson was selfish. Some woman 
had ministered to his comfort, his vanity, all his 
life. This one, he thought, had only done what 
was proper, everything considered. He was 
base, but with those dying eyes upon his face 
he did not remind Nancy that he had never 
spoken of marrying her. He could not tell the 
girl what he had come that night to say — that 
their acquaintance must come to an end, be- 
cause he was to marry Squire Jones’s daughter, 
Juniata, next month. 

And she, even with the prescience of death, 
could not read his treachery. With his hand 
clasped tightly in her own she did not know him 
false. 

Swiftly her life ebbed away. She grew 
weaker, weaker. “I am — so — tired. Kiss me 
— once more — Val. Say you — love me. My 
Val. I — love — love — . It is — dark.” 

With his words, his kiss (heaven would par- 

58 


AT A WAY-STATION 


don this last deceit), Nancy’s eyes closed to 
open no more on this earth. On the other side, 
it may be, she took up the thread of existence 
that had lain in the shadow here and carried it 
on into the eternal brightness — the glory that is 
neither of sun nor of moon. 


59 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


M RS. HANNAH BROOKS, “Aunt Han- 
nah,” as she was commonly known, had 
been a consistent member of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church from the time she was eleven 
years old, and she was now sixty-two. For 
over fifty years she had walked in the strait 
and narrow path and had never failed to observe 
the ordinances of the church, or to rebuke sin 
wherever she detected it. Many people, even 
church members, felt that Mrs. Brooks’s stand- 
ard of behavior was a little too exacting and se- 
vere for nineteenth century use. She was quite 
as austere in her views as if she had been a 
direct descendant of a Puritan father and had 
lived all her life on stony New England soil in- 
stead of having been born in Indiana of parents 
who had come from the “old country.” The 
Puritan influence affects all American character 
60 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


more or less, and it is a mistake to suppose that 
the stern and rigid code of conduct commonly- 
ascribed to that influence is confined to one lo- 
cality or is accepted only by Americans whose 
family trees were planted in this soil before the 
Revolution. 

Mrs. Brooks had early been taught to be- 
lieve that dancing was a device of the ene- 
my of mankind to ensnare the souls of youth. 
Card playing was an abomination that none 
could tamper with without danger of missing 
heaven ; while as for the theater, that was sim- 
ply an open door to the place of everlasting tor- 
ment. All through her life she had frequently 
found it necessary to warn and reprove young 
people of her acquaintance who showed an incli- 
nation to indulge in the two first-named frivoli- 
ties, but the theater evil was one she had en- 
countered only in recent years. Aunt Hannah 
had never lived in the city, her home having 
been first upon a farm, and, later, and for many 
years now, in the little town of Cicero, which has 
no opera house and whose dramas are not 
played upon the stage. With increasing fre- 
quency the rumor came to her that some young 
man or maiden had visited the theater in Indian- 
61 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


apolis to see a performance by graceless play- 
actors — a “show” they called it — and if these 
erring young persons were in the church she in- 
variably took pains to make a personal remon- 
strance and to urge them to turn again to the 
strait and narrow path. 

Among themselves these young people, feel- 
ing a little guilty and conscience-stricken over 
their conduct, nevertheless, said sometimes that 
Aunt Hannah was hard and unsympathetic, and 
that she would not talk so if she were not so 
old-fashioned and understood how harmless 
theaters really were. But Mrs. Brooks was not 
unsympathetic. She believed firmly that all 
these things were wicked. She had been taught 
so, and had seen no reason to change her opin- 
ion. Believing thus, and being very direct, out- 
spoken and fearless in her methods, she hesitated 
not to free her mind when occasion seemed to 
require. 

She was an uncommonly intelligent and well- 
informed woman for one of her limited oppor- 
tunities, being a close reader of such literature 
as came in her way — the range extending from 
the Bible and the life of John Wesley to Roe’s 
novels and the weekly newspaper. But read- 
62 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


in g must be supplemented by experience and 
observation before it gives breadth of view and 
liberality of judgment. She realized vaguely 
that a change of sentiment had taken place in 
recent years concerning card playing, dancing 
and kindred amusements, but she felt that this 
was merely a symptom of the degeneracy of the 
times and was strongly to be combated. Even 
the ministry was being tainted with moral weak- 
ness, for had not Presiding Elder Daniels — and 
he one of the most influential men in the con- 
ference, too! — said to her one day when she 
was discoursing on this subject — had he not 
used these almost incendiary words : 

“People must have amusements, SisterBrooks, 
and perhaps it is better to let them enjoy their 
pleasures under the sanction of the church. In 
old times they danced before the Lord, you 
know.” 

This was heresy that horrified the good lady, 
but she resolved, let come what might, that she 
would abate not a jot or tittle of her efforts 
against sin. Whatever others might do she 
would obey the spirit of the rules and regulations 
laid down in the Methodist Book of Discipline, 
and one of these rules charged that no entertain- 
63 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


ment be entered into on which the blessing of 
the Lord could not be asked, or words to that 
effect. And to the best of her ability she did. 
She neglected none of the accepted means of 
grace. She was a regular attendant at prayer- 
meeting, where her voice was frequently raised 
in exhortation and prayer, as is the custom with 
devout and elderly sisters in that fold. She was 
faithful at class-meeting, and there confessed her 
shortcomings with such reservations as seemed 
expedient in view of the fact that the listening 
ears were those of a dozen or so neighbors in- 
stead of a single father copfessor vowed to 
silence. For instance, she saw no necessity for 
relating in detail that she lost her temper and 
thought a dreadful thought, which if put in 
print would have contained a dash, when her 
clothesline broke on Monday and let her week’s 
“wash” into the mud. All she considered 
essential was to acknowledge, in a general way, 
that she was a weak and sinful creature, and to 
ask the prayers of her brethren and sisters that 
she might overcome the old Adam and lay hold 
more firmly on divine grace. If any of her 
friends and neighbors had dared to arise in the 
same meeting and to speak of her as weak and 
64 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


sinful it would have been a very different affair. 
But none of them did. They only sighed heav- 
ily, looked dismal and said “Amen!” or “Lord 
bless!” after the relation of each “experience.” 

Of late, as it happened, Mrs. Brooks’s atten- 
tion had been especially attracted to matters of 
a theatrical drift. A son living in Chicago occa- 
sionally sent her a Sunday paper, and those pa- 
pers, as everybody knows, devote a considerable 
share of their space to the drama in its various 
phases. She had serious doubts as to the pro- 
priety of reading these newspapers because they 
were labeled “Sunday,” but, reflecting that it 
was along in the middle of the week before they 
reached her, she decided, through some obscure 
train of logic, that there was no moral delin- 
quency in finding out just what had been going 
on in the world three or four days before. 

It was something of a task to read a twenty, 
thirty or forty-page Chicago paper through from 
beginning to end with the religious care that she 
did her county weekly, but in the two or three 
weeks that each copy lay around before another 
arrived she accomplished the task. Conse- 
quently she read a good deal about the thea- 
ters, much of it not to edification, because she 
5 65 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


had never seen a play nor read one, and failed 
to comprehend many allusions. There was 
something about these columns that attracted 
her, however, and she continued to peruse them 
with interest. One day she found something 
within her comprehension. In response to pop- 
ular demand, Joseph Jefferson had reproduced 
his * ‘ Rip Van Winkle ’ ’ that season after its 
semi-retirement for some years, and Chicago 
papers had a great deal to say about it and 
about him — all in the way of praise. Now, 
Mrs. Brooks knew all about “ Rip Van Winkle ” 
and all about Jefferson. The daughter of her 
next-door neighbor on the east was a school- 
teacher in the city — said city meaning Indian- 
apolis, of course — and subscribed for the Century 
Magazine, sending each copy home after she had 
read it. When the family was through with it, 
it was passed around the neighborhood, begin- 
ning with Mrs. Brooks. Among other things 
she found in it was Jefferson’s autobiography. 
She began reading this under the vague impres- 
sion that Joseph Jefferson was a statesman of the 
Thomas Jefferson type; or, if not, perhaps 
a great writer, though she did not remember to 
have heard of him. At any rate, he must be a 
66 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


distinguished man, for only that kind wrote bi- 
ographies of themselves and got them printed. 
When she learned that he was only an actor she 
felt something of a shock, but by that time 
she was interested in his career and pleased with 
the good principles he seemed to possess and 
the excellent moral sentiments he enunciated 
incidentally. It did seem strange, though, that 
such a man should engage in so reprehensible a 
calling. 

When she came to the account of his appear- 
ance as Rip Van Winkle she was again surprised 
and pleased, for had she not read Irving’s story 
of that good-for-nothing but winsome idler? 
Her next-door neighbor on the west had received 
a copy of the “Sketch Book” as a prize for sub- 
scribing for the Weekly Bugle, and, like most 
other books in the village, it had eventually grav- 
itated into her hands. 

Altogether, she was fairly well posted in re- 
gard to this particular bit of drama, and was 
startled one day by the discovery that she was 
actually wishing to see the play and to see Jef- 
ferson. The idea was really shocking. She, a 
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 
good standing, to think of going to the theater 
6/ 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


of all places in the world. Satan himself must 
have put the suggestion into her mind. Did 
not the church Discipline enjoin members to en- 
gage in no pastimes which could not be per- 
formed to the glory of God? Certainly no one 
could praise God at the theater; and yet — and 
yet, there was nothing especially objectionable 
about “Rip Van Winkle,” while Mr. Jefferson 
seemed a good sort of man according to his light. 
However, perhaps the theatrical columns of the 
Sunday papers were just as well left alone, and 
she would have no more of them. 

The truth was that Mrs. Brooks had, without 
suspecting it, a liking for the dramatic and for 
the spectacular. She patronized all the enter- 
tainments given under church auspices, and was 
pleased with them in proportion as they were 
picturesque or exciting. She liked elocutionary 
performances, and was partial to the more dra- 
matic recitations. She never missed charades or 
tableaux arranged by the young people, and 
made no criticisms, though the representations 
were scenes from profane history or heathen gods 
and goddesses arranged in white cotton drapery, 
such as gods never wore before. She liked 
lively music — dance music, if she only knew it 
68 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


— revival meetings of the stirring, fervid sort, 
and temperance meetings where the emotions were 
played upon by skillful speakers. 

A week or so after this twinge of worldly 
temptation Mrs. Brooks went to spend a few 
days with her married daughter in Indianapolis 
to help that young matron with her winter sew- 
ing. The very evening of her arrival her son- 
in-law remarked to his wife at the supper table : 

“Maria, Joe Jefferson is to play ‘Rip Van 
Winkle’ to-morrow night. You know we have 
been waiting to see him again, and I have 
bought tickets.” 

Now, Mrs. Brooks knew that since her mar- 
riage her daughter had departed from the strict 
ways of her youth, and now and then indulged 
in that perilous frivolity, progressive euchre, and 
attended the theater. She had made vigorous 
remonstrance, as in duty bound, but, finding 
her protests of no use, had abandoned the fight, 
at least till an opportune season. Out of respect 
to her mother’s feelings, Maria tacitly ignored 
the subject, and now endeavored to signal her 
husband to silence, but he went placidly on and 
invited his mother-in-law to go with them, say- 
ing he would secure another seat. Much to his 
69 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


surprise, and more to* that of his wife, Mrs. 
Brooks did not manifest that animosity toward 
theaters which a mention of them in her pres- 
ence had been wont to arouse, and which the 
artful son-in-law had hoped to excite on this 
occasion for his own delectation. On the con- 
trary, she took up the subject with a show of 
interest more eager than she knew, and dis- 
played so much familiarity with Jefferson and 
his play that the two younger people looked at 
each other in wonder. But when urged to say 
whether or not she would go she suddenly stif- 
fened and responded coldly: 

“George Henry, you know my principles in 
regard to such places. To-morrow night I shall 
go to hear Francis Murphy. I know the way 
to the hall, and am not afraid to go and come 
alone.” 

Next evening came, but Maria had a head- 
ache and could not go. George proposed to 
escort his mother-in-law to the Murphy meeting 
and leave her there while he went to the theater 
for an act or two—' ‘ for it was really a pity to 
miss it when we had the tickets and the time. 
You know, Mother Brooks,” he said solemnly, 
winking at his wife over his mother-in-law’s 
70 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


head, “ you know going to see Jefferson is not 
like going to see other actors. He plays such 
nice, clean, moral plays and is such a high-toned, 
moral man — church member, and all that — that 
it is almost as good as going to a religious meet- 
ing to hear him.” 

“Church member, is he?” was Mrs. Brooks’s 
only response, but the acute George Henry de- 
tected an expression in her eye that led him to 
whisper to his wife, as he kissed her good-night : 
“If we are not home till late you may know that 
I have inveigled your esteemed parent into a 
wild orgy at the theater.” 

It was a fair night, and they walked down. 
The Grand Opera House was on the way to 
Tomlinson Hall, and as they drew near its por- 
tals the orchestra could be heard discoursing 
some very lively music preliminary to the raising 
of the curtain. When they reached the entrance 
George Henry turned toward it. 

“ Come, Mother Brooks, let’s hear Jefferson. 
You may never have another chance. He beats 
Francis Murphy all hollow. It’s all right. 
You’ll find lots of good people there who would- 
n’t go to any other play nor to see any other 
actor for the world. ” 


71 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


There was a faint remonstrance — where were 
Mrs. Brooks’s accustomed vim and decision? 
There was a feeble holding back of her steps, 
but her eyes were fixed on the distant drop cur- 
tain, visible through the open doors — and in she 
went. 

It was an event in her life. The stage with 
its setting, was as novel to her as to a child. 
There it all was, just as she had read about it, 
but so much more real — the village green, the 
old Dutch burghers, the vixenish Gretchen, lit- 
tle Katrina and the happy-go-lucky, lazy, but 
lovable Rip. As played, the story had some 
points she did not recall in the book, but what 
mattered ! There was Rip doing the best he 
could. Suppose he was lazy and shiftless and 
did get tipsy sometimes, such a wife was enough 
to drive a man to drink. Mrs. Brooks forgot 
time and place in following his fortunes. She 
leaned forward, filled with visible wrath when 
Gretchen scolded, and when, at last, the wife 
drove him from home with his dog, and Rip 
turned and bade her and his child a touching fare- 
well, tears ran down her cheeks unheeded. 

Then, how she thrilled at the thunder of the 
mysterious ninepins rolled in the hollows of the 
72 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


Catskills by Hendrick Hudson’s men ; how weird 
those old Dutchmen were; how wonderful was 
the red fire that flashed over them, making them 
look like creatures from the infernal regions! 
How her heart and her throat ached for the poor, 
pitiful old man when he woke from his twenty 
years’ sleep and wandered back to his home to 
find the world changed! What a wonderful 
thing it was altogether that one man — for the 
others in the play did not matter much — that 
one man could make a mere story, an impossi- 
ble legend, seem so true, such a thing of actual 
life! And what a delightful creature he was, 
that Rip, that Jefferson, with his airy wave of 
the hand and his confidential, infectious smile. 

She was glad she had seen him; glad, glad. 

And this statement she adhered to. George 
Henry was discreet enough to say very little 
about this escapade of his mother-in-law, but 
she knew that she would meet no such consid- 
eration at home, for in coming out of the opera 
house she had jostled against young Hiram 
Jones, of Cicero, whom she had often rebuked 
for his theater-going, and whose father was her 
class leader. But she was not cast down. She 
had no intention of concealing her act. Next 
73 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


Sunday she went to church as usual, serene in 
the consciousness of looking well in a brand 
new, though properly plain, bonnet bought in 
the city. As usual, she appeared in class meet- 
ing when the hour came. Her keen eye de- 
tected a movement of interest and curiosity on 
the part of others present, which convinced her 
that young Hiram had told his story. 

Brother Minshall, being called on after the 
opening prayer and hymn, arose and repeated 
with nasal emphasis the formula of forty years, 
beginning: “Brethren and sisters, I feel to re- 
joice that I am spared to be with you another 
Sunday, that I may tell you of the wondrous 
work of grace in my heart/ * 

Sister Angeline Martin told her hearers in 
droning phrase that she was a weak and sinful 
worm of the dust, but that she had fixed her 
trust in the Lord and knew that He would lift 
her up. 

Uncle Ezra Hinshaw was glad to add his 
testimony and to say that he was on the Lord's 
side, and had been for nigh on to forty year. 
An hour spent here, he said, was worth all the 
fleeting joys the world could give. 


7 4 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


And so it went on until Mrs. Brooks arose. 
She wasted no time in preliminaries. 

“I take it for granted, brethren and sisters,” 
she said, “that you know I attended the theater 
when I was in the city last week, and that you 
want to know how I reconcile it with my pro- 
fessions. I did go; I got no harm, but very 
much enjoyment, and, I think, some good. I 
learned that whatever some theater plays may 
be, some others are as good as the best sermons. 
I have found out that it doesn’t do to abuse all 
theaters because some are bad. I don’t feel 
that I did anything wrong. I don’t advise any- 
body else to go, and I don’t advise them not. 
It is a matter with their own conscience. Mine 
is clear. I expect never to go again, but I am 
glad I went, and glad I learned what I learned, 
and glad I saw Joe Jefferson. Praise the Lord ! ’ ’ 

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” 
said the leader with solemn intonation, but with 
a faint twinkle in his eye. He was a discreet 
man, and had been to the theater in his time, 
too. So the class sang the doxology and was 
dismissed. 

Going out, Aunt Hannah met young Hiram 


75 


MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 


Jones, looking a little sheepish, and shook hands 
with him. 

“Wasn’t it beautiful?” said she. “Ain’tyou 
glad you went, and ain’t Joseph Jefferson great? 
May he live long and prosper.” 


76 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


T HE woman who was a critical reader of mag- 
azines met her friend, the writer of stories, 
in the little railroad station at Mullins, in south- 
ern Indiana. The writer had just arrived from 
Indianapolis; the other was waiting the north- 
bound train. 

“What have you come to this dull, lonely, 
forlorn place for? Not for literary material, 
surely? My grandmother lives here, and I 
have known the town all my life. Nothing ro- 
mantic ever happened to anyone here ; there are 
no incidents, no tragedies, no characters worth 
studying; the people simply vegetate.” 

“I never hunt for ‘material’ anywhere,” re- 
plied the woman who wrote. “It comes to me 
— crowds itself on me. I have been sent for by 
an invalid cousin, and expect not to think of lit- 
erary matters ; but if I were searching for themes 
I have no doubt I could find them, even here.” 
77 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


“I am sure you could not. What, for in- 
stance (here the speaker’s voice was lowered), 
what could you make out of that spiritless, 
meek, faded-out creature there? She is a resi- 
dent here; I have seen her often, but she is so 
colorless I never had the curiosity to ask even 
her name. I am sure she never had a vivid 
emotion, never really lived in all her life.” 

“Perhaps not,” laughed the writer, “but I 
believe she has a story. I will find it out and 
tell it to you.” 

This is the story she told a month later : 

Martin Davis did not look much like a man 
with aesthetic sentiment in his soul as he left his 
plow in the furrow that afternoon in early April 
and drove his tired horses up the lane. His face 
was weatherbeaten, his hands rough and hard, 
his clothing cheap and coarse, his high boots, 
into which his jeans trousers were tucked, caked 
with mud. But he was young and vigorous; 
his eyes were bright and eager, and he felt him- 
self a man to be envied, for had he not a wife 
waiting for him at the house — a bride of but a 
few weeks? In the band of his rusty felt hat he 
had slipped a bunch of yellow violets. 

78 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


“ I knew ye liked posies, Lizzie,” he said as 
he handed them to her at the kitchen door, 
“and these are the first I’ve seen this season, 
’thout it’s the little white windflowers that wilt 
while ye’re pickin’ them. These yellow things 
are way ahead of time. I’ve never found them 
before earlier than May; they’re not common 
hereabouts, anyhow, but I know of a spot down 
in the holler where they always flourish.” 

When she put them in a teacup and set them 
on the supper table he wondered vaguely why 
he had never known before that flowers made a 
room look so cheerful — almost as if the sun were 
shining, though that luminary had sunk be- 
hind the western hill. He did not know that 
the brightness was not of the flowers, but was 
the light of love reflected from his heart and 
hers. 

It was but a brief time that his happiness lasted. 
That was the spring of ’ 6 1 , and the country was 
even then calling upon her loyal sons. Martin 
Davis turned his horses into the pasture, left his 
crops for others to harvest and went unhesitat- 
ingly to answer the call. Oh, the heroism of 
the myriads who thus went out from home, and 
peace, and love, to the battlefield in those 
79 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


dreadful years ! What if they did not know 
that the ninety days would lengthen until no 
man could name the end, and that the slain 
would be like the leaves of the forest for num- 
bers? What if they did go simply from a 
matter-of-fact sense of duty, and with little feel- 
ing of risk and danger, or because the riotous 
spirit of youth yearned for adventure? The 
fact remains — the tremendous, immutable fact — 
that they went by hundreds, by thousands, by 
tens and hundreds of thousands, and that they 
offered their lives. Greater love than this hath 
no man, and yet we, in this frivolous later day, 
dare sometimes speak lightly of those men and 
their sacrifices. 

It was a monotonous and a hard life for the 
most part, that of a private soldier in the war 
for the Union. Its story has been told in frag- 
ments at home firesides and by campfires, but 
never in literature as a whole for the world to 
know. Perhaps it never will be. The veterans 
tell of battles and of victories and of stirring 
events, but they do not, as a class, care to dwell 
upon their hardships and sufferings. The ex- 
perience cut deep, and the scars are even yet 
too sensitive to touch upon. 

80 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


Martin Davis's life was not different from the 
rest. There was the drill and the camp life, the 
picket duty, the marching, the digging of 
trenches and building of breastworks, the 
skirmishing, the expectation of encounters with 
the enemy — all this for slow and weary months, 
and at last a great battle. 

Lizzie, the young wife at home, waited from 
week to week and month to month, as women 
did in those days, with what show of patience 
and composure they could muster — a proof of 
courage and patriotism not less than that of going 
to war. The soldiers’ story may sometimes be 
told, but where is the historian who shall portray 
the agony of the women’s waiting hearts, the suf- 
fering of uncertainty and suspense? Who shall 
comprehend the anguish of their tears? Who 
understand that the strain of constant dread of 
evil news from husband and brother and lover 
was greater than that felt by the soldier before 
the enemy’s guns — that it left unhealed scars 
that aged them before their time? 

Lizzie Martin fared like the other women — 
hoping and praying, living upon the letters that 
came at irregular intervals, going about her tasks 
by day, with heavy heart, and enduring long 
6 8 1 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


nights with their visions of war and woe. In the 
little town from which the flower of the young 
men had already gone, existence was not gay at 
the best of times, and was now more monotonous 
than ever to the women, whose part was to wait. 
There were few things to distract their minds 
from their own anxieties; they were not the 
‘ ‘new” women, with many and diverse activities, 
and so they sat at home and thought of what 
might be. Mrs. Davis did not love her husband 
more than the other lonely women loved theirs, 
perhaps ; but without him she was quite alone 
in the world, and it was natural that no event of 
the war was important in which he had no place. 
That brawny private, that long-limbed, awkward 
farmer boy, was all the world to her. No future 
opened to her vision which he did not share. 
She was a commonplace little creature, narrow 
in thought and limited in capacity, but other and 
greater women have found it all of life to love 
one man. 

Letters came to her from Tennessee now. 
Martin wrote that it looked as if some fighting 
would be done very soon that would scatter the 
rebels and end the war. Then came the fall of 
Forts Henry and Donelson, and he wrote with 
82 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


still greater certainty that the war was soon to 
close. Men better informed than he thought so 
then. After that there was marching across 
country, transportation by boat up the Tennes- 
see, more marching, with rain and mud and cold 
as features of the travel — all this described in 
fragmentary scrawls. One of them, dated April 
5th, and written on a scrap of paper while he 
stood in the rain with his company awaiting 
orders, said there would be fighting soon, and 
added: “Here’s a yellow violet; just found it 

under a bank. Season’s early down here. 
We’re going to beat the rebs out of their boots. 
Good-bye.’’ 

This note, and then — silence. There had 
been a battle; it was Shiloh — bloody Shiloh. 
On its gory field, when the 7th of April dawned, 
the dead lay by thousands — the blue and the 
gray. Oh, Shiloh! the waiting hearts that 
broke when your victory was won ! 

Private Davis, of Company D, was numbered 
among the dead. A comrade wrote to Lizzie, 
telling her that Martin had died like a hero. A part 
of his regiment had faced about and retreated, 
broken in a panic before the Confederates’ furi- 
ous onslaught; but he had remained, had seized 

83 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


the flag from the hand of the fleeing color-bearer 
and gone on triumphantly to meet the coming 
foe. In the thick of the fight he was seen to 
fall, “and,” said the writer, with no art at soft- 
ening cruel truth, “he was buried in a trench.” 

To the widow a realizing sense of the death 
did not come. It is often so when those away 
from home are taken ; to their families they seem 
still temporarily absent and likely to return at 
any hour. She accepted the situation dumbly, 
uncomplainingly. She had no longer a keen 
interest in life, and was without the strength of 
character to rise above her grief and force her- 
self to accept new interests. She was simply an 
every-day woman, who had loved her husband 
and continued to love and to think of him day 
and night, though he was dead. She sold her 
farm to a rich neighbor, who took advantage of 
her ignorance to pay her but half its value, and 
she was deprived of a large share of the pro- 
ceeds by a sharper to whom she intrusted them 
for investment. Then she settled down in the 
little town and became a neighborhood drudge. 
She sewed, nursed the sick, took care of the 
new babies, and was at the beck and call of any 


84 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


housewife who needed her in domestic emergen- 
cies. 

The years went on with little variety. The 
war ended, and affairs settled into new grooves. 
A flood of prosperity swept over the country 
and affected even this quiet town, but made lit- 
tle difference in Mrs. Davis’s plodding, unevent- 
ful existence. No one pitied her especially for 
her lonely and hard-working life. She was 
spoken of as “the widow Davis,” but she was 
only one among many widows the war had cre- 
ated, and, as she made no ado over her woes, 
no one else thought to do it for her. They had 
their own troubles to think of. They did say, 
along at first, that she didn’t take Mart’s death 
very hard. She “didn’t make no fuss,” they 
said, and they “ ’lowed” she was “ruther shal- 
ler.” Afterwards they practically forgot him, 
and assumed that she had done the same. But 
she never put off her simple mourning garb ; her 
mouth fixed itself in a pathetic little droop ; her 
brown hair faded early. And she would not 
marry again. Ten years after Shiloh, John 
Holt, a thrifty widower, attracted by her quiet, 
industrious ways, sought her as a step-mother 
for his children. 


85 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


“No, Mr. Holt,” she said. “I can’t be 
your wife. Martin Davis is dead and buried, 
but I can’t make him seem dead nohow; I 
never have, an’ I don’t reckon I ever can. I 
feel as if he was gone jest on a trip; an’ I 
dream of him o’ nights, an’ I’m always glad 
when night comes, because them dreams come, 
too. I’ll go along by myself till the time comes 
for me to go and meet Martin — but it’s long, 
long ! ’ ’ 

And then, her self-repression overcome by 
the sudden compassion in the man’s eyes, she 
bowed her head upon the table and sobbed and 
wept in the utter abandonment of a grief which 
knows no pretense. 

John Holt went away thoughtful, and was 
afterwards heard to say it was a “sing’lar dis- 
pensation o’ Providence that took a man away 
from a wife like that an’ let other men live 
whose wives wouldn’t a-mourned for ’em over 
night if they’d drownded theirselves.” 

More years went, until, one day, Mrs. Davis 
heard of an excursion that filled her patient 
soul with longing. This was a trip by boat to 
Shiloh battleground. She had never been 
further from home than to Cincinnati, fifty miles 
86 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


away, where she had gone once when a girl, 
but she determined to make this journey. It 
was a great undertaking, and she got ready for 
it with an excitement such as had not stirred 
her for years. She never thought of the South 
but as the rebels’ country, and, though she 
knew there were no rebels now, there was down 
in her heart a dull hatred of all Southerners, 
because but for them there would have been no 
war — but for a certain one of them who had fired 
a fatal shot she would not have been left in 
loneliness all these long years. 

Men and women of the world who, through 
contact with people of many localities, have 
gained the ability to judge their fellow-be- 
ings dispassionately find it difficult to compre- 
hend the limitations of one who has but a single 
point of view. Lizzie Davis had had but one 
great interest in life, and had never been able to 
consider the outside world in any other than its 
relation to herself. 

The trip down the Ohio river, though novel, 
aroused no emotion ; once on the Tennessee she 
began to brighten. Martin had made this jour- 
ney not long before his death. The war, now 
so far past, was brought close to her. The bat- 

87 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


tie seemed but a little while back. On the 
wooded bluffs she could almost see rebel skir- 
mishers in hiding. Her meek, feminine soul, 
which had never before directed a cruel thought 
toward any individual, suddenly throbbed with 
fierce resentment; the slow, easy-going natives, 
who strolled down to the landings and leisurely 
carried their freight up the bank in primitive 
fashion, seemed to her to represent a blood- 
thirsty, murderous people. She eyed them 
malevolently. 

One day the captain of the boat sat down by 
her side on the deck. He was a middle-aged 
man of slow, soft speech and gentle manner — as 
far removed from the typical bluff, gruff, pro- 
fane, aggressive river man of literature as possi- 
ble. He had already won Mrs. Davis's confi- 
dence by his deferential courtesy and attentions 
to which she was a stranger at home. There no 
one was unkind, but certainly no one was no- 
ticeably considerate of the comfort of women, 
especially those of no particular importance. 
He narrated to her bits of history about the 
places along the river, with every foot of which 
he was familiar, and told anecdotes of the peo- 


88 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


pie, half of whom he seemed to know by their 
Christian names. 

“ How can you speak so kindly of them, an’ 
you a soldier, too?” she broke out at last. 
“ Rebels I reckon they were, most of ’em, an’ 
killed our men, an’ would do it again if they 
had a chance.” 

He turned to her slowly and without a sign of 
surprise; she was not a new type to him. 

“Madam, these people along heah were 
mostly Union sympathizers during the wah. 
I was a soldier in the Confede’at ahmy.” 

It was a shock. Ex-rebels had found their 
way to her little village since the war, but a 
good many sons had gone out from there to 
fight for the Union, and never to return, and 
those wanderers from the South were not made 
welcome, but had mostly drifted on to regions 
elsewhere in Indiana where were friends and 
sympathizers. She had never so much as talked 
with one before. 

Then he told her, in a quiet, reminiscent way, 
some stories of his youth and his far Southern 
home ; of how the South was then all the coun- 
try he knew, and the North a far-off, cold re- 
gion, whose people, he was taught, cared only 
89 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


to buy and sell, and to subjugate and rob the 
South ; of how the war broke out and one by 
one his neighbors joined the army, then his 
brothers, and then himself, a boy of sixteen — all 
filled with fierce patriotism and the blind belief 
that they were fighting for the right ; of how his 
brothers had been slain, and how he had gone 
home, when at last the conflict was over, to find 
that home dismantled, the mother who had been 
its center forever gone, and he, yet a boy in 
years, lonely, disheartened and forlorn. 

It was a revelation to the woman of few ideas 
that rebels — rebels!— were creatures with loves 
and sorrows like her own. 

And they went on up the shining river, and a 
little of the peace and beauty of it entered into 
her soul. It was May, and the fields and for- 
ests were in freshest array. The gray-green 
willows, the rank water maples and the glossy 
oaks that crowded the river bank were fringed 
with undergrowth, and their trunks lost in a tan- 
gle of honey-suckles, grape-vines and ivy. It 
was primitive wilderness, such as the Indian 
must have looked at in his day. 

Then came Fort Henry. The boat, which 
stopped accommodatingly wherever a would-be 
90 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


traveler waived a handkerchief, obligingly made 
fast while passengers climbed the hill and wan- 
dered over the old earthworks that made the 
walls of that famous fort. In the glamour of 
the moonlight and the softness of the shadows 
could almost be seen the soldiers who had once 
crowded the place — but trees had grown up 
within the walls since that day, and the soldiers 
— where were they? 

Then Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh, and the 
woman from the little Indiana town had reached 
her Mecca. 

They wandered over the battlefield, those 
tourists ; they saw it almost as it looked on the 
fatal Sunday so long ago, only to-day the sun 
shone, and then the very heavens had wept at 
the sight below. They saw the place where the 
fight was fiercest and most furious — the “Hor- 
net’s Nest,” where Union men and Confederates 
met hand to hand and the slaughter was so 
great that the dead lay in heaps. They saw 
the pool whose margin had been red with the 
blood of wounded men who had dragged them- 
selves there to quench their raging thirst. To- 
day cattle drank from it undisturbed. 

There were houses here and there — primitive 
9i 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


structures, hardly more than cabins. Mrs. Davis 
stopped at the door of one to ask for water. An 
old woman came out, a woman with a scant 
calico gown and clumsy shoes, and eyes blurred 
perhaps with age, possibly with tears, but kindly 
still. She grew garrulous in response to a timid 
question. 

“Yes, she had lived hereabouts evah since 
befo’ the wah. She an’ her ole man was Union, 
but their six boys couldn’t no ways agree, an’ 
three j’ined the Union ahmy an’ three the Con- 
fede’at. An’, yes — yes, it’s all done ended 
long ago, but some days the time seems yistiddy, 
an’ it all comes back. Her ole man couldn’t 
keep out no ways when the boys was gone, an’ 
he jined, too, when General Sherman come 
along. An’ — yes, the boys was all killed; three 
at Donelson, two here at Shiloh Church, an’ one 
at Chattanooga. Their pap didn’t live long after ; 
sort o’ broke down like. An’ if it wasn’t that 
the boys who died here were buried in a Con- 
fede’at trench (did the visitor see the ridge over 
thataway?) she reckoned she’d disremembah 
which was Union an’ which wasn’t. Such things 
didn’t seem to make no difference, nohow, when 
they alls was gone to rest twel jedgment day.” 
92 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


The woman who had lost one and the woman 
who had lost seven looked in each other’s eyes 
and knew the kinship of grief, and somehow the 
visitor from the North felt no longer a personal 
resentment for her loss. Though it might have 
been a son of this woman who shot her Martin, 
he had thought he was right and meant no 
evil. 

Then she entered the gates of the National 
Cemetery, where the Union dead are laid in 
long lines, with a granite block marking each 
resting place. The captain of the boat joined 
her at the gate, and as he passed in he plucked 
a sprig of cedar. The sun shining through the 
branches of the great forest trees flecked the 
grass upon the graves ; a soft May breeze scat- 
tered the leaves of the early blooming roses. 
Down between the rows of stones they walked, 
and the captain, pausing at one bearing the 
number 1607, lifted his hat reverently and laid 
the bit of cedar upon it. 

“I put a little posy there every time I come,” 
he said gently ; “I reckoned that may be the 
wife or mother of the boy lying there might like 
it.” 

The man lying there might be her Martin, 

93 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


thought the little widow, and from that moment 
her heart ceased to cherish animosity toward any 
man who had fought on the other side. 

She stood on the bluff and looked down on 
the sparkling, glinting river. The panorama of 
water and sky and hill stretching for miles be- 
fore her was a vision fair to see. The flag of 
her country floated from the great staff above ; 
the only sound was the singing of the birds, and 
the peace of God was over all. 

More years went by, and the Widow Davis 
plodded patiently through them, getting a little 
more weary as they passed and finding the bur- 
den of loneliness none the easier to bear as age 
crept on. That visit to Shiloh had taught her 
some things, toleration among the rest, but it 
had also taken away one thing that had been a 
secret source of comfort to her. Until that time 
she had pictured to herself the return of her 
husband. She was a woman with but scant 
imaginative power, but where even the dullest 
mind dwells much upon one subject it weaves 
about it a network of fancy far different from 
reality. She had not seen her husband dead ; 
a battle was a vague thing to her ; he had sim- 
94 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


ply gone away and had not come back. Per- 
haps he had been wounded, had lost a leg or an 
arm, and a prisoner in rebel hands was long in 
recovering. Then, perhaps — here her fancy 
took a wild leap — perhaps he was told by some 
one that she was dead, or that she, thinking 
him dead, had married again, though she didn't 
quite see how he could believe she could marry 
another man. But such things had happened — 
she had read of them ; and supposing he had 
believed it, he would wander away and never 
care to revisit his old home until, at last, he 
somehow learned the truth and hastened to her 
with joy. Or it might be that he had escaped 
from his rebel prison, had reached the sea-coast, 
had crept on board some foreign vessel, and 
had been carried to far-off lands, whence he 
would some day return. 

Vain imaginings, but lonely women dream 
strange things while they go half mechanically 
about their monotonous daily tasks. Even the 
happiness of happy women is half in this unreal 
inner life. After this visit to Shiloh these com- 
forting pictures were conjured up no more in 
Lizzie’s mind. It was all real now, the battle 
and the slaughter, and she had seen the graves 
95 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


where the soldiers lay ; her thoughts centered 
about “ 1607,” where the captain's tribute 
rested, and she felt more and more convinced 
that Martin slept beneath that stone. It was 
nearly thirty years, a lifetime, since he went, 
and he would come to her now only after 
heaven’s gate had opened to let her in. She 
had mourned her lost love for thirty years. She, 
a little, commonplace woman of whom no one 
would have thought as a heroine of romance. 
She would not have known what the term 
‘ ‘ grand passion ’ ’ meant ; she had been simply 
faithful to a memory in a quiet, undemonstrative 
way; her life had been bound up in a sentiment, 
that was all. 

One day in April — it was the 30th Shiloh 
anniversary — she was at her little cottage, no 
neighbor needing her services as nurse or seam- 
stress. It had been an early spring, and she 
went out in the garden to look at the signs of 
life among her few cherished flowers. In a sun- 
ny corner wild violets grew and had pushed 
green leaves above the mold, but no buds were 
yet in sight. 

‘ ‘ I remember, ' ’ she said, speaking to a neigh- 


96 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


bor who had paused in passing, “ I remember 
seeing violet flowers as early as this.” 

She was thinking of those stuck in the band of 
Martin’s hat that day so long ago when he came 
from the field, and as she spoke she looked 
down the village street, wondering at the unu- 
sual boisterousness of the school children. They 
followed after and jeered at a man who came 
slowly and hesitatingly along, as if uncertain of 
his way. His clothing was rough, his shoulders 
bent and his gait shambling. On his head was 
a military cap, such as some old soldiers still in- 
sist upon wearing, and on its side was some- 
thing like a decoration on a woman’s bonnet. It 
was this that made the children jeer. Mrs. Da- 
vis put her hand over her eyes and looked at it 
intently. Hardly knowing what she did, she 
went out upon the walk and down the street to 
meet him. When she came closer she saw that 
the decoration was a bunch of yellow violets. 
She stopped before the man and looked at him. 
She had never thought of her husband as other 
than erect, and strong, and young; this man 
was feeble, and dim-eyed, and old, but — she 
knew him. 

“Martin!” she said; “Martin!” and reached 

7 97 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


out her hands, forgetful of watching neighbors 
and wondering children. 

Something like a miracle happened in that 
moment. The years fell away from her as a 
garment; the flush in her cheek, the love light 
in her eyes transfigured her. 

“ Lizzie!” said the man, the dull, dazed ex- 
pression clearing from his face. “ Lizzie/’ and 
he fumbled at his cap, “ I — I thought ye’d like 
some posies, and came round by the holler and 
got them.” 

She took him by the hand and led him into 
the house, her face still illumined. 

The woman who wrote stories and the other 
who read them met again on the street of Mul- 
lins. Toward them came Lizzie Davis. She 
was the woman who had been at the station 
weeks before, but she was like one born again. 
Her hair was faded, it is true; her complexion 
gray, her dress old-fashioned and rusty, but her 
eyes were bright, her bearing erect and proud, 
her face smiling. She stopped a moment to 
speak to the woman who wrote. 

“Just think, Miss,” she said; “Martin lived 
over in Jonesboro, just beyond the Ohio line, 
98 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


and not fifty miles from here, for twenty years. 
I’ve just seen a man from there. Where he had 
been before that time the Lord knows. The 
man says that they all knowed something was 
the matter with his head. Seemed to do his 
work well on the farm, but every now an’ then 
he’d get uneasy an’ talk an’ talk about some 
place he’d ought to go if he could only just 
think of the name; an’ when he heard any one 
call ‘Lizzie’ he always got worried and fidgety. 
Come spring, too, every year, he’d pick flowers 
an’ wear ’em in his hat. Then at last one day 
his recollection seemed to come to him sudden, 
and he up an’ started off, the man said, acting 
like a crazy lunatic. He found his way here, 
an’ he’s getting to be more like himself every 
day, an’ it almost seems as if he’d never been 
away.” 

A glow was on her cheek like the blush of a 
bride; the thirty years of loneliness were as 
naught; the children that might have been hers, 
the happiness and peace she had missed were 
forgotten. The mother heart in her went out to 
the broken-down man and was satisfied. He 
came shuffling down the walk. 

“See how well he looks,” she said, as she 
99 


AN ABIDING LOVE 


hastened toward him, with a face through which 
love shone as it must shine on the faces of the 
angels in heaven. 

“You were wrong, you see,” softly said the 
woman who wrote, to her friend; “you were 
wrong when you declared there was no romance 
here; that the people merely vegetated. That 
woman has lived.” 

“Yes,” said the other, “she has loved,” 


ioo 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


“ IT WAS an exceptional case, that of the Mar- 
I shalls, Brother Johnson, or I never should 
have advised them to the course they took.” 

The speaker, familiarly known as Father Allen 
to all the region round about, was a minister of 
the Methodist denomination, who, after an itin- 
erant life of forty years, had, as his professional 
brethren put it, “ assumed the superannuated re- 
lation.” This being interpreted, meant that he 
had retired from regular duty and occupied him- 
self, as age and strength would permit, in ren- 
dering such service to neighboring members of 
his old flock as occasion called for. An old 
minister comes to be identified with a family as 
no newcomer can. He has comforted its mem- 
bers in their sorrows and participated in their 
pleasures ; he has been with them at their funer- 
als and their marriage feasts, and in the emer- 
gencies of life they turn to him. 

IOI 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


To-day, Father Allen had accompanied the 
Reverend Mr. Johnson, the young preacher 
lately stationed at Amber Center, the little In- 
diana town whose roofs were visible far across 
the prairie, on his first round of pastoral calls. 
They had just taken their departure from the 
white farmhouse of the Marshalls, bearing with 
them the look of ineffable content that comes 
to mankind only after the consumption of a 
bountiful meal, and were discussing the affairs 
of their entertainers, as is the ancient custom of 
guests of all degree, regardless of canons of 
etiquette. 

Acting on the principle that a pastor should 
be thoroughly acquainted with the history of his 
flock in order to meet its spiritual needs, as a 
physician is better fitted to prescribe for a pa- 
tient’s ills when he understands his physical 
constitution, the old minister gave, with some- 
what garrulous, not to say gossipy, detail, par- 
ticulars of each individual’s life to the new shep- 
herd. 

“Yes, it was an exceptional case. It is hardly 
necessary to say, I hope, Brother Johnson, that 
I am opposed to divorce. The ease with which 
legal separations are to be had is one of the 


102 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


greatest evils of our time ; I need not enlarge on 
that. Still — Brother Johnson, one must use 
judgment, and it is difficult to make an iron-clad 
rule for all cases. ‘A rule already made,’ do 
you say? Well, yes, yes — of course. As a 
general thing it is best to abide by the literal 
scriptural injunction, and I am the last person 
to countenance any other course. Nevertheless, 
my son, you will find, as your experience with 
the realities of the world broadens, that it is 
sometimes inexpedient to insist upon too rigid 
an application of the letter of the law. 

“Now, in the case of the Marshalls, John was 
very deeply attached to his first wife, whom he 
married on the day of his enlistment in the 
army, twenty years ago; very deeply attached, 
no doubt of it. His wife, pretty Rose Lytle, 
was fond of him in her way, too, but she was 
of a clinging, dependent nature, and would, per- 
haps, have been equally happy had it chanced 
to be another than John, who had so devoted 
himself to her. The woman who loved him 
most deeply on the day of his marriage was 
Rose’s cousin and adopted sister, Mary; but 
that was her secret. Many a woman has such. 
Rose was a pretty creature. It was twenty 
103 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


years ago, but I remember her well. She 
reminded me — my wife’s name was Rose, too.” 

The old man’s voice faltered. It was not 
upon the prospect near that his dim eyes were 
wistfully fixed, but upon something far beyond. 
Before them the western sky was gorgeous with 
crimson and purple and gold — fit reminder of 
the gates of the New Jerusalem — but Mr. John- 
son removed his gaze from the glory of the sun- 
set to glance curiously at his aged companion, 
knowing as he did, that the name of the present 
Mrs. Allen was Sarah, and that the neatly 
framed portrait of her immediate predecessor 
was carefully labeled, “My beloved consort, 
Matilda.” 

“A week later,” resumed the elder gentle- 
man, “John was on his way with his regiment 
to the South, and the women were left to each 
other’s company. The months following went 
by slowly enough, no doubt, to the girl in the 
lonely prairie home and to the man toiling in 
Virginia trenches, or marching over sodden 
hills; time moves slowly, you know, when one 
is young and impatient.” 

When the ‘ body is in Segovia ’ and the 
‘soul is in Madrid,’ ” softly interpolated the lis- 
104 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


tener, who was yet young enough to permit sen- 
timent to come to the surface now and then. 

“But time goes for all, * ’ continued the old min- 
ister, “and before the year’s close it had ended 
to the consciousness of one of the pair. A re- 
port that John had been killed in battle came 
suddenly to the ears of the waiting wife — a false 
report, as later appeared, like so many that 
came from ‘the front’ in those days. Next day 
their son was born, but the mother had no smile 
at the sight of the baby face. The shock of the 
news had deprived her of reason. Physical 
strength came back in time, but with its return 
the insanity increased until she raved with mad- 
ness and became dangerously violent. The hus- 
band, who had been wounded only, came home 
on furlough, but his presence excited her to 
fierce outbursts. 

“ It was a long time before John or the cousin 
Mary, patiently devoted to mother and child, 
would consent to send the cherished and petted 
girl away from their own care to an institution 
for the insane ; but finally the safety of all de- 
manded it. She was taken to an asylum and is 
there to-day. 

“John rejoined his regiment, and when the 
105 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


war was over came back to find his home and 
child well cared for by the faithful Mary. Mat- 
ters went on in this way for a while, with the ad- 
dition of himself as head of the household. Left 
to himself, he would perhaps have discovered 
no reason why the agreeable conditions should 
not continue, but when Mary, the center of this 
home life, suddenly resumed her old occupation 
of teaching, and would give no explanation of 
her course to the bewildered man save that she 
preferred the change, there were neighbors will- 
ing to enlighten him. In the matter of social 
conventionalities and proprieties people in coun- 
try communities are very exacting, Brother 
Johnson, and it was not considered proper that 
Mary should remain as housekeeper for a man 
who was her brother-in-law only by courtesy. 

“Naturally, this was the beginning of the 
end. They soon discovered each other’s senti- 
ments and came to me for advice, separately 
and together. The physicians had assured 
them that Rose was hopelessly insane; that 
while no one could say with absolute certainty 
that she would not recover, the tendencies in her 
case gave no encouragement for such hope. In- 
sanity was not specified as legal cause for di- 
106 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


vorce, but in those days, Indiana courts were 
allowed by the statutes far greater liberty and 
discretion than now, and, under the circum- 
stances, there was no difficulty in the way of 
securing a decree of separation. The only 
question with these two, Mary and John, was 
whether it was right for John to be divorced 
even with conditions as they were. They were 
conscientious and argued for and against them- 
selves.’ ’ 

‘ ‘To me it seemed one of the exceptional cases. 
Marshall needed some one at the head of his es- 
tablishment ; he had not so warm an affection for 
this woman, perhaps, as for Rose, but he would 
make her a good husband. Mary cared for him 
as she never could for another. It is best for 
women to marry. It seemed to me expedient 
that these two should be united, and so I ad- 
vised the divorce. I am still of the opinion that 
the course was wise.” 

“Mrs. Marshall’s expression did not strike 
me as that of a particularly happy woman,” 
said Mr. Johnson. “She looked sad, I thought, 
and anxious.” 

“Women, as a class, are foolish,” hastily ex- 
claimed the old man. “The best of them have 
107 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


imaginary troubles. Mrs. Marshall allows her- 
self to be tormented by the fear that Rose will 
yet be cured, and reproaches herself at the same 
time for dreading what ought, under other cir- 
cumstances, to be a blessing. However, as I 
said, women will find something to worry over, 
and if it were not for this fanciful notion, Mrs. 
Marshall, good, sensible woman that she is, 
would have some other. I believe she did 
well. ,, 

As they drove up the village street in the 
haze of the late Indian summer twilight the 
young minister breathed a sigh. He had been 
impressed by what the poet calls the large, 
sweet calmness of the prairie; but peace, after 
all, did not, it seemed, abide with the people. 
He wondered what would be the end if, at last, 
the innocent, but cast-off wife should be restored 
to the realities of life. 

Back in the white house on the prairie the 
first chapter of the sequel to the old minister’s 
story had even then begun. 

After the visitors had driven away, John 
Marshall and his wife stood on the steps, his 
eyes fixed absently on the purple line of the hor- 
108 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


izon far across the level plain, she, with her 
face turned toward his. A question was on her 
lips, but she did not speak, only touched his 
arm softly while the look of vague apprehension 
in her eyes deepened into what was almost ter- 
ror. At last he moved until his glance met 
hers. 

“What you have always dreaded has hap- 
pened,” he said. “Rose has recovered her 
mind.” 

The woman at his side did not cry out nor 
moan — she was not of the demonstrative sort; 
but a change come over her while she stood 
there as if she had suddenly grown old and 
feeble. Her face looked pinched and gray. She 
took her hand from his arm and moved back a 
pace — a movement that told its own story. Af- 
ter a moment he went on steadily : 

“The doctor writes that it is a very unex- 
pected recovery ; quite remarkable in the history 
of such cases. She is well as ever, mentally, 
but oddly enough her bodily strength has as 
suddenly failed, and, according to what he says, 
she is not likely to be better. It is not probable 
at the best that she will live many months — 
perhaps not even weeks ; but in order to pro- 
109 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


long her life, as well as to retain her mental bal- 
ance, she must be carefully guarded from a 
shock of any sort. This, above all things, must be 
the care of those about her, he says, and ex- 
plains that he has said nothing to her concern- 
ing our family affairs. And,” after a pause in 
which he glanced uneasily at his wife, “Rose 
wants to come home.” 

She looked at him with calm, tearless eyes. 

“Do you wish her to come?” she asked. 

“Well,” he answered, hesitatingly, “it’s a 
queer fix. We’re all she’s got, you know, you 
and I, and to send her among strangers now — it 
doesn’t seem just right. She was our little Rose, 

you remember, and . If she were well it 

would be different, of course. Still, if you think 
it won’t do — if you can’t have it so, let it be as 
you please, Mary.” 

“I only wanted to know what you wished. 
Do you think I would say to you, I who took 
her place, that our doors must be shut against 
her? We will go to-morrow and bring her home, 
and I will do what I can to make her last days 
happy.” 

John Marshall breathed a sigh of relief as if a 


i io 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


weight were lifted from his mind. He looked 
at his wife approvingly. 

“You are a good woman, Mary/’ he said. 

Many a man addressing such words to his 
wife would have followed them with a caress, 
but John Marshall turned away and went about 
his evening tasks while Mary passed slowly and 
wearily into the house. A coat belonging to 
her husband hung in the hall. She caught the 
sleeve in her hand and kissed it. A girl or a 
gay young matron might have been thus child- 
ishly demonstrative without suspicion of any 
deeper feeling than an impulsive outburst of 
affection toward the owner of the garment. Dis- 
cerning eyes like those of Father Allen, grown 
keen with a half century’s study of human 
weaknesses, would have seen in the act of this 
middle-aged woman the betrayal of a heart’s 
hunger. 

Mechanically she went about her household 
duties and preparations for the guest, the dread 
of whose possible coming had hung over her 
like a shadow for fifteen years. No detail was 
overlooked in arranging for the comfort of 
“John’s wife,’’ as Mary caught herself calling 
in her thoughts the woman who had dropped 


1 1 1 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


out of conscious existence so long ago. She 
had come back to life as from the dead. If a 
wrong had been done to her in her helpless 
state those who had committed it must, as they 
hoped for mercy hereafter, do what they could 
to save her from its consequences; there was 
no other way. They, the wrong-doers, she 
and John, must suffer in the performance of 
their duty; but they had no right to complain. 
It was Rose, little Rose, whom they had loved 
and who had trusted them so completely, who 
was coming back, and she must find the doors 
open. 

Like a dream that day and the next seemed 
to her afterwards. The journey to the city, the 
meeting with the one so miraculously restored 
to them, the return home, were events that fixed 
themselves but dimly on her memory. The cen- 
tral fact that the companion of her girlhood, the 
wife of John’s youth, was with them again ab- 
sorbed her faculties to the exclusion of lesser mat- 
ters . It was not until Rose was installed in the sun- 
ny upper room and the domestic routine had 
adjusted itself to the change in affairs that the sec- 
ond wife realized the nature of the task she had 


1 12 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


set herself to do — that had been imposed upon 
her she whispered in bitter protest sometimes. 

Her married life had been haunted by the fear 
that Rose might regain her reason, but the pic- 
ture formed in her fancy had been of a wan and 
haggard creature heaping reproaches on the hus- 
band who had been unfaithful in her absence, 
and on the woman who had promised a dying 
father to care for her and had then usurped her 
place. Never had she, in her wildest dreams, 
contemplated anything like the reality which she 
now faced. 

It was no pallid, wild-eyed woman who sat in 
the upper chamber, but a smiling guest whose 
every wish was honored. Strangely enough, 
the change that had been wrought in Rose’s 
mental condition had its counterpart in a phys- 
ical transformation. The deathly paleness, the 
hollow cheek, the look of age which had charac- 
terized the insane woman had given way to a 
color rivaling the peachy bloom of twenty years 
before; the blue eyes, dull for so long, shone 
with all their old vivid brilliancy beneath the 
long lashes ; the face was rounded out, and its 
youthful outlines were emphasized by the baby- 
ish rings of fair hair that lay about the white 
8 1 1 3 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


forehead. The weakness and languor that ac- 
companied this change and did not pass away 
only added to her attractiveness. As she 
leaned back upon the cushions of the chair that 
she seldom left it was difficult to believe that the 
face was that of one who had lived past her girl- 
hood. To the lookers-on it seemed that nature 
had endeavored to compensate for the lost years 
by a veritable renewal of youth and beauty. 

It was not the difficult task that had been 
feared to guard her against injurious shocks. 
She quietly assumed, without question, that the 
relations of her loved ones were as they had been 
of old ; indeed she seemed not to realize the 
time that had passed since she left them. John 
was her husband ; Mary, the dear sister who had 
kept his house and awaited her recovery and re- 
turn. Rose asked for her son but showed little 
emotion when told with hesitant caution — this 
was one of the things that could not be concealed 
or denied — that he had been a feeble child 
who, after five years of baby life, had left them 
and gone to heaven. The infant had not formed 
a part of the life she remembered, and knowledge 
of his death did not move her deeply. In tell- 
ing the story of the little one whom she had loved 
114 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


like her own, Mary thought, with almost a guilty 
feeling, of the sturdy boy who called her mother 
and whose existence must be so carefully hid- 
den. The presence of a boy in the house might 
be easily enough accounted for, but he must not 
come where “Aunt Rose” was lest she ask fatal 
questions. 

“It is enough that you and I must deceive 
her, but my boy shall not be taught to lie or to 
deny his birthright,” said Mary, with fierce de- 
cision, and John had agreed. 

A negro and his wife who had followed John 
from “ole Kaintuck” to find a home in the 
North, and who had been faithful servants ever 
since, formed the rest of the household. Visit- 
ors were few. A prairie road after November 
rains is not a thoroughfare sought by any ex- 
cept those on journeys of necessity. The few 
old friends or curious neighbors drawn thither 
by the news of Rose’s return were quietly cau- 
tioned not to touch on personal matters in their 
conversation with the invalid. This caution and 
the chance allusions Rose made to her “hus- 
band” led the visitors, ignorant of the kindly 
deceit being practiced upon her, and doubtful, 
as the most intelligent people often are, of the 
1 15 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


entire recovery of those once insane, to believe 
that her mind was not yet sound. So it came 
about that the little drama being enacted in that 
prairie farm-house had few spectators. 

Rose expressed little curiosity concerning 
events that had happened during her absence, 
and showed no interest in affairs outside their 
own little circle. She was content to live like a 
child, taking up life where she had left it, and 
thinking nothing of the morrow. One thing 
only she demanded as her right, and that the 
hardest of all for one member of the household 
to grant. “Her John’s” society she claimed in 
all of his leisure moments, and as a farmer in 
the position of this man is an independent being 
who orders his own goings-in and comings-out, 
the result was that John, “my dear John,” as 
Rose called him, was at her side many hours in 
the day. Mary might be there, too; Rose 
wanted Mary also at hand, or within call, but 
without John she fretted and was restless. 

At first Mary quieted her misgivings with a 
sense of shame at their existence. John, she 
said, was, like herself, trying to do his duty. 
She could serve the invalid in other ways; he 
could only bear her company. But the days 
1 1 6 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


went on, and that upper room became a place 
of torture for the lawful wife so steadfastly doing 
that which seemed best. 

John was good ; he was a good man, she said 
over and over. Not to himself would the loyal 
soul willingly utter a complaint of the one she 
loved, but at last she could no longer close her 
eyes to the truth. In an agony which could 
find no expression, Mary acknowledged to her- 
self that her husband sought the presence of that 
transfigured woman who had been the bride of 
his youth, because in that presence he found 
pleasure and delight. All through the fifteen 
years of her life with him she had been conscious 
of a lack of responsiveness to the cravings of her 
affection ; but she had stilled the aching of her 
heart with the thought, not that he mourned the 
loss of Rose, but that a sentiment of self-reproach 
for having set her aside in her misfortune had 
raised a barrier in his nature between himself 
and the companion in the wrong which he could 
not overcome. And now she knew that this cold- 
ness was because he loved this other as he had 
not loved her. 

During those long years she had never been 
quite happy because of the invisible barrier; 
ii 7 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


sometimes she had fancied herself wretched. 
Looking back to that time now, she felt, in the 
sharpness of her suffering, that she had lived in 
paradise. Then, it was a vague, unsubstantial 
thing that held them apart; now, it was a beau- 
tiful woman who thought herself his wife. 

That room had a fascination for Mrs. Mar- 
shall; she suffered when there, but after leaving 
it she hastened back. Neither occupant seemed 
to mind her presence. Rose did not; — con- 
scious of no wrong, why should she? John did 
not, being apparently unaware, as he sat near, 
and often with Rose’s pretty hand in his, that 
he was exceeding the part of a courteous host. 

One day, to Mary, going quietly about some 
task in an outer room, floated a voice in soft re- 
proach : 

“John, do you love me?” 

“Why Rose, my dear Rose, don’t you know 
we all love you?” 

“ ‘We!’ I am not talking of ‘we,’ but of 
you. Do you know, John, that you have never 
kissed me since the day I came home? Is that 
the way a man behaves who loves his wife?” 

And Mary, her heart faint with pain and 
shame and outraged love, saw the man succumb 
1 18 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


to the pleading eyes and outstretched arms. A 
kiss like that, she knew, had never been given 
her. Alive with the quick instinct to possess 
her own she started forward, but in a moment 
turned and crept away like a wounded creature, 
even then excusing the one who had pierced her 
soul. 

“Could any man do differently? Only a 
saint could resist that loveliness for the sake of 
a woman such as I, worn with care and on-com- 
ing years.” 

She could not breathe under that roof. Out 
into the chill November day she hastened, not 
caring whither. Heavy gusts of rain swept 
across the sky, shrouding the prairie in a gray 
mist through which the scattered trees loomed 
dimly, their bare boughs tossing like the spars 
of a ship in a laboring sea. Conscious of little 
but her own thoughts, she hurried on until her 
footsteps were checked by the surprised voice of 
Father Allen hastening from the performance of 
some errand of mercy to gain shelter from the 
wintry storm. 

“Are you crazy, daughter?” 

“It would be better if I were; it would save 
trouble. If John could have left me at the 
119 


A FBRMHOUSE DRAMA 


asylum when he brought Rose away how much 
better it would have been. But this life is kill- 
ing me — I shall die, I shall die and be out of 
their way. Rose will get well — do you hear 
me, Father Allen? When I married John I 
prayed that Rose, my little cousin Rose, might 
never recover her mind. I founded my hap- 
piness on her misfortune. Now, I can see 
no happiness while we both live. I am like a 
murderer, Father Allen! But my punishment 
has come. The Lord does not wait until the 
hereafter.” 

The burst of passion ended in tears and sobs, 
and the old man, dismounting from his horse, 
led her unresistingly home and delivered her 
into the hands of the faithful black ’Liza, whose 
ire had long since been excited by what she de- 
scribed to her spouse, Tom, as the “scan’lous 
goings on ob dat crazy woman with Mistah 
John.” 

“I will remonstrate with Brother Marshall,” 
thought the ministerial visitor. “It is a pecul- 
iar case, and he means ho harm, I am sure ; but, 
really, it is a very trying position for Sister Mar- 
shall, and he should be more considerate.” 

Mr. Allen was old ; the woes of women did 


120 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


not impress him as they might have done a 
younger man, or as they would have impressed 
him even now, perhaps, had not the many sor- 
rowful tales poured into his ears during the forty 
years of his ministry somewhat dulled his sensi- 
bilities. So it happened that he was not stern 
and severe in his remonstrance with Mr. Mar- 
shall when he drew him aside that night after 
supper, at which Mary presided, pale but self- 
possessed once more. 

“If Mary wishes to tell Rose the truth and 
kill her, she may do so, or you may do it; I 
will not,” said John. “While she is here I 
shall treat her kindly, whatever others may do. 
Come up and see her.” 

The old minister followed his host. In that 
radiant presence he, too, forgot the aching heart 
below and thought only of Rose and the wife of 
his youth whose likeness he fancied he saw in 
the face before him. 

That night Rose moaned in her sleep, and 
Mary, rising from her couch near by, found the 
white hands clasped over the heart and won- 
dered if the pangs of actual disease could equal 
her own pain. 

Next day the wild storm continued and the 
1 2 I 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


minister, who had remained over night, pro- 
longed his stay. Mary wandered restlessly 
over the house, now in the kitchen with ’Liza, 
now talking lightly with Father Allen in the 
pleasant parlor, but never long absent from the 
spot up-stairs where all interest centered. 

“You look pale — are you not well?” said 
Rose once. “John, you must not let Mary 
work too hard for me. Dear Mary! How 
should we do without her?” 

Mary’s answer was short and brusque as she 
hurried away, thinking bitterly that John had 
no thought to spare for any illness of hers. Re- 
penting, presently, of her ungracious response 
to a kind inquiry, and returning, she saw re- 
peated the loving scene of the day before. John 
was on his knees by Rose’s side, her arms 
about his neck. 

“I dreamed of our baby last night, John. 
When I am well — I think I shall be well soon — 
I want you to take me down to see where you 
have laid him. If I should die I want my — 
there, there — hush! I know you love me; I 
know you do, and I won’t talk again of leaving 
you. Poor John ; he has had no one to pet and 
care for him, and he wants his little Rose.” 


122 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


Half an hour later ’Liza, intent on some house- 
hold service, found Mrs. Marshall lying pros- 
trate on the floor of an unused room. She was 
not unconscious — women out of books do not 
faint when their hearts break — but nature had 
reached a limit, and after the storm of tears and 
strong crying had come a dullness of feeling that 
was almost insensibility. 

’Liza stooped to raise her, but suddenly 
changed her plan. “This is Mistah John’s busi- 
ness, an’ I’ll be boun’ he ’tends to it.” 

No delicately conscientious scruples troubled 
her mind. 

“Mistah John’s a mighty good man; nevah 
had nothin’ to say ’gainst him befo’, but it do 
look mighty cur’ous to see him hangin’ roun’ a 
crazy woman that he divorced hisself from, an’ 
thinkin’ no mo’ o’ this hyer po’ lamb than if 
the ole elder hadn’t done married ’em fas’ an’ 
tight. ’Taint gwine on no mo’, nohow, if this 
chile kin stop it. Bettah be the crazy woman 
than Mis’ Mary if somebody gwine die fo’ it.” 

And ’Liza, muttering ominously, marched to 
the front room. There even she paused. 

“Ole ’Liza’s a mighty mean niggah when the 
blessed Lawd’s grace done loose its hold on her, 
123 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


but the devil aint nevah gwine make her huht 
Mis’ Rose, who looks like a angel o’ the ’poca- 
lypse, crazy or no crazy.” 

And so, very quietly, she called Mr. Marshall 
out of the charmed presence. Father Allen, on 
his way upstairs, was summoned also. Once in 
that distant room over the half conscious “Mis’ 
Mary,” ’Liza’s wrath broke forth. 

“Ole ’Liza’s done thought a heap o’ you, 
Mistah John. I nevah reckoned I’ us trailin’ out 
o’ ole Kaintuck aftah a man who was gwine have 
two wives undah one roof. Is yo’ that stone 
bline an’ onfeelin’, Mistah John, that yo’ aint 
see this blessed lamb dyin’ foh the love o’ yo’ 
on ’count o’ the way yo’ carryin’ on? What 
yo’ reckon the Lawd thinkin’ o’ class-leadah 
Mahshall ’bout now?” 

She was on the floor holding Mary’s head on 
her ample bosom, loosening her dress, chafing 
her hands. 

“Yo’ an’ Eldah Allen, hyer, yo’ alls think 
its Mis’ Mary’s duty to make it easy foh you 
uns, an’ aint a carin’ if she done make a bu’nt 
offering o’ herself. Yo’ alls may be mighty 
good in yo’ minds, but yo’ ain’ got no kind o’ 
feelin’s. Ary man what wants his wife to stan’ 
124 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


back an’ be sweet an’ party wiles he honeys up 
to a nurrer woman is boun’ to get all broke 
up in he cackleations. No woman, black or 
white, ain’ made thataway. Ole Mis’ Duncan, 
down in Kaintuck, used to ’low, ‘ ’Liza,’ she ’low, 
‘ebery male man that was evah bohned would be 
a Mohmon or a heathen Tuhk if he wasn’t 
’shamed to have folks know it.’ Ole Mis’ hadn’t 
had good luck with her husban’s an’ was down 
on the sect pow’ful ha’d, but the longah I live 
the mo’ I’s ’pressed with the ’pinion that a man 
what wants to get into the heabenly kingdom’s 
got to live mighty close in this worl’, mighty 
close.” 

John made no attempt to check this impetu- 
ous tirade, but during its progress his eyes had 
become wide open to the situation. His cheeks 
burned with shame. He took Mary from Liza’s 
arms and laid her upon a bed. The sound of 
his voice brought her to herself. Half dazed 
she struggled to her feet. 

“Father Allen,” said the man, “We, — I 
have made a mistake. One wrong can not be 
set right by another. Mary, here, is my wife. 
We will have done with this deception, and will 


25 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


go and tell Rose, let the consequences be what 
they may." 

Supporting his wife, he moved toward the 
room across the house, followed by the old min- 
ister, with ’Liza, alarmed now at the result of 
her temerity, bringing up the rear. Even at that 
moment, Mary, beginning to recover herself, 
forgot her own grief and pleaded brokenly for 
delay. Strong as had been John Marshall’s res- 
olution of a moment before, his steps faltered 
as they approached the door. A moment more 
and all paused involuntarily — arrested by the 
words they heard and the sight before them. 

Standing by Rose’s side was Mary’s son, the 
lad of twelve. Coming into the house he had 
heard the sharp alarm of Aunt Rose’s bell and, 
finding no one to answer the call, had gone up 
and peeped bashfully in. 

Rose, gasping for breath in sudden faintness, 
motioned for water and air. She revived pres- 
ently, the boy watching her, meanwhile, with 
wondering eyes. 

"I have heard you about the house,’’ she 
said faintly but with a smile ; 4 ‘ why have you 
never been to see me before? ’’ 


126 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


“ I wanted to come, but they said you must 
not be worried,” stammered the lad. 

‘ ‘ * They ’ ? Who are ‘ they ’ ? 

“Why, father and mother,” he answered in 
surprise. 

“Well, your father and mother, whoever they 
may be, should have known that boys would not 
trouble me; I like them. And what is your 
name, child?” 

The group at the door heard this and the 
boy’s quick answer: 

“My name is Richard — Dick, for short — 
Richard Marshall, you know.” 

Mary staggered forward as if to stop the 
words on the boy’s lips. 

“Save her, Lord!” she whispered. 

Father Allen held her arm. “Hush! it is 
too late. It is the will of God.” 

John stood as one paralyzed. 

“Richard Marshall,” she repeated wonder- 
ingly — “the same name. And are you related 
to Mr. John Marshall? He did not tell me — ” 

“Why, Mr. John Marshall is my father, 
didn’t you know? You must have forgotten, 
Aunt Rose. And, of course, Mrs. Mary Mar- 
shall is my mother.” 

The revelation which they had so guarded 
127 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


against had been made ; the shock so dreaded 
had been given. 

Rose seemed to realize the truth slowly. Her 
startled eyes fell upon the terror-stricken group 
at the doorway. Gradually, as comprehension 
of the situation dawned upon her, a change 
came over the sweet face. It grew gray and 
sharp; the brightness vanished. She suddenly 
seemed no longer young. 

“Is it true, John?” 

“It is true,” he whispered. 

“Why, then, when you had taken another in 
my place did you deceive me? Why was I 
allowed to think — ” 

“Rose, my darling, we did it for the best. 
We thought you would suffer ; we had done you 
a wrong and were afraid — Rose, Rose, it was 
for your sake. Can you not forgive?” 

John Marshall had drawn near to the woman 
on whom the shadow of death now plainly lay. 
Mary crept to the bedside and crouched there 
with head bowed low. For a long time, hours it 
seemed to the spell-bound watchers, the dying 
woman lay silent with her hands clenched over 
her heart. No sound was heard save the dash 
of rain upon the window and the crackling of 
the fire upon the hearth. At last she spoke: 
128 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


“It would be better for us all if I had died 
long ago, or if I had never come to myself in 
the asylum. I have wanted to live, but it does 
not matter now. I will go to my baby; the 
Lord will let me have him for my own in heav- 
en. I thought,” — the words came slowly and 
more faint — “I thought you were all mine, all 
mine, and you belonged to Mary. I had no 
one. But John,” triumphantly — it was the last 
flash of the woman nature regardless of human 
law for love’s sake — “John, you loved me best 
once; you love me now, don’t you, John?” 

The man, with his head bent upon the pillow, 
sobbed aloud. 

“Always, my darling.” 

After a pause she spoke again : 

“You did not mean to hurt. I have been 
happy — happy. Kiss me, John.” 

The face brightened with a strange light. 

“Mary, don’t cry. I — am — going — to — my 
— baby. Do — you — see? Mary, forgive .” 

Then the blue eyes looked on death. 

A pale gleam of sunshine, the first for days, 
broke through the clouds and fell upon the still 
face. Father Allen, with uplifted hands, whis- 
pered softly, “Let us pray.” 


129 


A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 


Six months later, Father Allen and the young 
pastor, driving across the prairie, stopped again 
at the Marshall home. Only the wife was 
within. In answer to a whispered inquiry from 
the older man, as he departed, she said gently, 
but with an unconscious touch of defiance in her 
speech: “I am happy, of course. He is mine, 
now — all mine. One does not fear the dead.” 

It was not quite a look of peace that filled her 
eyes as they left her gazing wistfully down the 
length of the level road. 

A mile beyond, at the other side of the 
broad prairie farm, was the little cottage where 
the dead Rose had spent the first brief months 
of her married life. It had never been occu- 
pied since by strangers. A marble shaft gleamed 
through the trees near by. Against the fence sur- 
rounding this leaned John Marshall, absorbed in 
contemplation of the two flower-grown mounds 
within. His horse, in the road at a little dis- 
tance, neighed impatiently, but the watcher 
gave no heed. 

“It seemed to me expedient,” said Father 
Allen, half to himself, as they drove, unnoticed, 
by; “but I may have been wrong. The Lord 
knows.” 


130 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


T HERE is a conviction among certain educated people 
that with increased intellectual culture comes a 
keener susceptibility to pleasure and pain. Is it so? 
Turn anywhere among the “ short and simple annals of 
the poor,” and we can find passion, and romance, and trag- 
edy. They do not call these incidents of life by such 
names ; they only live them. When love or suffering — 
and what else is life? — comes to us, we can analyze our 
emotions, and label them with high-sounding words ; we 
can tell of them in verse, or in language compared to 
which theirs is but an inarticulate cry. Are our feelings, 
therefore, deeper? 

“Slave! Yassum, an’ sot free by de prock- 
elmation. Hab I lib in dis yer house so long 
an’ yo’ nebah know I’se done been a slave?” 
And Aunty Smith, the African dame, who rep- 
resented that domestic institution known as “our 
girl,” gave the fire a vigorous poke. 

“Tell yo’ ’bout it? Dar ain’t nuffin’ to tell 
wuth the while for yo’ to listen. An’ ole nig- 
gah ain’t got no hist’ry — dat’s for white folkses. 

13 1 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


Didn't I heah yo’ a readin’ 'bout de hist’ry ob 
Jawge Washin’ton — an’ den talkin' to me? 
Sho!” 

The black lips parted over broad white teeth 
in a quick laugh, but no smile touched the sol- 
emn eyes given to her race by generations of 
bondage. 

“Time to be a-takin’ yo’ quinine, honey; 
bettah take it mighty reg’lah ef yo’ specks to 
get dem chills bruck. ‘Trouble?’ Yas, in- 
deedy, I’s had heaps ob trouble, but I nebah 
did go roun’ talkin’ ’bout it. Makes mattahs 
wuss to be forebber a-talkin’ an’ a-talkin’ ob 
yer trials. An’ I’s alius noticed dis yer fac’, 
dat mos’ people likes to tell deir own 'sperience 
’stiddy o’ hearin’ ’bout yours. Co’se I has to 
tell somebody an’ I tells de Lawd, but ’pears 
like de Lawd’s a long way off, sometimes. Ef 
I could be shore dat He alius heard a pore nig- 
gah I couldn’t nebah grieve no mo’.” 

“Has doubt seized the believers?” I thought. 
“If the rest of us were sure of that one thing 
what burdens would be lifted ! ” 

“I’s done been mahied fo’ times. Yassum ! 
By de preachah ebry time; dey couldn’t hab 
no foolishness wid dis chile. My first husband’s 
132 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


name was Caesah Mahshall. He b’ longed to 
Kunnel Mahshall, who at dat time was courtin' 
my mastah’s daughtah, Miss Betty, an’ ob 
course Caesah he spen’ a heap ob time 'round 
dar. Caesah he a likely boy, an’ all de gals 
tort dey gwine git him. But laws! I knowed 
he didn’t keer for none o’ dem niggahs. I did 
keep a mighty keen eye, dough, on Lize. She 
a yaller gal alius a-rollin’ her eyes an’ tossin’ 
her head, an’ thinkin’ herself good as white 
folkses; one o’ dese yer sly kind, too, a sayin’ 
flatterin’ things dat make a man think she a- 
dyin’ for lub o’ him. I gib her mighty little 
chance to try any of her sassy tricks on Caesah. 
Men’s dat pow’ful vain — you des know it’s so, 
honey — dey swallahs ebry soft an’ sugary speech 
ob de female sect as ef 'twar de libin’ trufe. But 
Caesah he wouldn’t hab no one but des’ me. 
He sayed I was like Solomon’s wife dat de 
Bible tells ob, ‘black but comely.’ I ax de 
preachah once ef Solomon was a cullud gemlan. 
He look scared, an’ sayed he couldn’t 'splain 
dat tex’ to an ig’nant pusson like me; sayed it 
didn’t mean what it sayed, but was a yallerglory 
'bout de chu'ch. Preachahs don’t know ebry 
thing more’n we’uns, an’ what’s de use for twis’ 
133 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


de words ob de good book different from what 
dey is? 

“Well, Caesah an’ me we done got mahied, 
an’ lived in a little cabin neah my mastah’s 
house, cause I had to wo’k hahd waitin’ on ole 
mistis an’ de young ladies. Dey wore heaps 
ob fine muslins an’ lawns in dem days an’ no 
one could do de washin’ an’ i’nin’ to suit dem 
but me. But I had a little time in my own 
house an’ Caesah he come often. I was dat 
happy I went roun’ singin’ from mawnin’ twel 
night; neber tort ’bout the nex’ day an’ what 
it might bring fo’th. Ef I was too happy with 
de things ob dis worl’, de Lawd knows my 
heart been heavy dis many yeahs to pay foh it. 
’Pears like all dat’s happen since has des’ teched 
de outside ob my feelin’s an’ lef ’ all de heavenly 
sweetness ob dat time shet off to itself. 

“De time went by twel one mawnin’ in de 
summah Caesah he agwine to come an’ tote de 
chile ober in de hills to a camp-meetin’ . She 
was two munce old, an’ I hadn’t neber had her 
’way from home befo’. Dar’s no tellin’ how 
proud we bofe was ob dat baby. 

“Dat mawnin’ I dress her an’ I waited. De 
people roun’ de place dey get ready an’ go. 

134 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


None ob dem stopped to talk, but I ’membered 
aft’ wards dey look mighty queah at me. Lize, 
dat yaller gal I’se tellin’ yo’ ob, she run back 
an’ hug de baby. Yo’ pore crittah, I thought, 
yo’d gib all dat finery for sich a honey-drop! 

“An’ I waited. Plenty things might ob hap- 
pen for to keep Caesah away, so I sang Rosy to 
sleep. Den somehow I ’gan to ’member de 
looks an’ de whispers dat I hadn’t noticed at de 
time, an’ it seem to grow dark, dough de sun 
was a-shinin’ ; an’ de chills crep ober me. Ole 
mistis’s mockin’-bird up at de big house, how 
it did sing ! I ’spise a mockin’-bird eber sence. 
I waited — an’ aft’ while ole mistis come walkin’ 
down the paf. She was bawn an’ raised in de 
Nawf, was ole mistis, an’ neber ’peared to like 
de black people. She hab berry sharp eyes — 
’bout de color ob de blade ob a new razah, — an’ 
when she come close an’ look at me I felt as ef 
dey cut me clean froo. She hab a soft voice, 
an’ dar was a little smile on her face when she 
tole me — she tole me — she stretch up an’ pick 
some yaller roses from de bush dat grow’d ober 
de do’, an’ she say dat if I ’spect to git to 
camp-meetin’ I better be agwine; dat I’d haf to 
pack de chile de whole way, for Caesah he fur 
135 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


’nough off now. She tole me he been sold down 
Souf, whar he’d be ’bliged to pick cotton an’ 
git ober some ob his fine notions. 

“When she were gone ’way I tore de yaller 
rosebush down an’ tromp it undah my feet. 
Aftah dat for a spell I don’t rightly ’member 
what happened. Dey tole me dat Caesah he 
try to ’scape frum de tradahs; dat dey chase 
him wid de dogs, an’ when de men tort he gwine 
to cross de ribah dey done shoot him dead. 
Heabenly Mastah ! an’ I lubed him so ! 

“I lib through it all. Many a woman, black 
or white, could tell yo’ dat she goes on a-libin’ an’ 
every night a-prayin’ de Lawd her soul to take. 

“I foun’ out dat Kunnel Mahshall he felt so 
mighty pore dat he had to sell some of his 
people. De Kunnel he one o’ de real Ken- 
tucky gemlen; great man to be a-bettin’ an' a- 
hoss racin’. He’d loss a heap of money on his 
fas’ hoss, ’kase it wasn’t so fas’ as some o’ de 
rest, an’ he an’ Miss Betty gwine to be mahied ; 
so ob co’se he must hab money — an’ he sold 
Caesah. 

“Den Rosy died; an’ when I look at her in 
de little coffin I’s dat glad I couldn’t cry. I’s 
glad, honey, ’kase she nebber hab no trouble. 

136 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


“Well, de time go on, an’ diff’rent men 
dey ax me to marry, but I tole dem to go off 
’bout deir business. But laws! a man cain’t 
b’lieve a woman don’t keer nuffin fer him ! So 
dey kephangin’ roun’ twel Mistis she say I mus’ 
marry. Mistis she hab a thrifty turn an’ wanted 
all her people to marry an’ raise chillen, kase 
chillen proputty in dem days. Bless de Lawd ! 
I didn’t hab no mo* chillen fer her to count as I 
do de pigs. 

“At las’ I mahied Big Tom to git shet ob 
him, but I done miss it, fer shore as yo’ lib, dat 
crittah tuck de kinsumption. He war de mos’ 
misable, no-’ count niggah I ’member to hab 
knowed. I waited on dat man night an’ day, 
an’ like to run my laigs off; tried to be as good 
to him as'ef he were de light ob my eyes; but 
nuffin pleased him no ways. One day he shied 
a flat-i’n at me an’ cut a gash ober mylef’ year. 
De scar’s dah yit. I’s pow’ful mad den, an’ 
says I, ‘Ole man, ye kin cough yo’ livah an’ 
lights up foh all me, an’ de soonah de bettah.* 

“ ’Bout dat time mastah done send him down 
de ribah on some business. Tom he were 
mastah’s right han’, an’ mastah didn’t pay no 
’tention to de kinsumption dat he say ailded 
137 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


him. Well, de steamboat blowed up, an’ I 
s’pose Tom done get blowed up too, for I’s 
neber seed him since. 

“Aft’ dat, a spell, I mahied Joe, ’kase he was 
lively, an’ kept us all a-laughin’ with his jokes. 
He played de fiddle like an angel, too, an’ 
when I sot an’ listened, seemed as ef I could see 
beyond the stahs clar into de New Jerusalem. 
But Joe didn’t have good jedgment ’bout some 
mattahs. De wah was gwine on by dis time, 
an’ nuffin’ would do but Joe he mus’ go with 
Kunnel Mahshall down into Jawgy for to jine de 
’federate ahmy. De Kunnel was his mastah, 
but he didn’t hab to go. He was gwine to be 
a drummah, an’ was dat heedless he nevah 
’fleeted dad he was on de wrong side; reckon 
he nevah s’ posed dar’d be anything else but 
playin’ on de fife an’ drum. In de berry fust 
skrimmage dey had, Joe was killed. Might a 
knowed he’d hab bad luck, an’ I tole him so 
’fore he went. Joe had a good heart, dough, 
an’ I don’t 'spect de Lawd will be hahd on him 
for habin’ been bawn so giddy. 

“Aftah while, when de prockelmation set de 
culled people free, de family bruck up, an’ I 
went up to Louieville for to get washin’ an i’nin’. 
138 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


Dah I met Mistah Smith at pra’r-meetin’ . He 
were pow’ful in pra’r, an’ he seem struck with 
my ’pearance (I had on my violent dress for 
de fust time). At de second pra’r-meetin’ he 
tole me he’d had a hebenly vision which sayed 
I was to be his second pahtnah. Co’se I 
couldn’t stan’ out ’gainst de will ob de Lawd, 
an’ dat’s why I’s now Mrs. Smith. His name 
was Obadiah, but he ’quested me for to call him 
Mistah Smith; sayed it ’corded bettah wid de 
condition ob de woman to be ’spectful to de 
husban’ ; man, he say, bein’ so s’perior. 

“Mistah Smith an’ me we done git along 
comf’tably twel he died, which was des befo’ I 
come heah. I nebah had no fault to fine, ’cept 
dat he did talk too much ’bout de fust Mrs. 
Smith. I’s had a heap ob trouble wid dat boy 
ob hers, but I’s tried to do my juty by him. I’s 
whipped him once a week reg’lah, ’kase he’s 
pow’ful bad, but he’s mos’ too big for me now, 
an’ I’se ’fraid de debbil ’ll ketch him. 

“What’ll I do in hebben wid so many hus- 
ban’s? I won’t hab but one, bless de Lawd, 
an’ dat’s Caesah. Tom he won’t be dah; Joe 
he’ll be so tuck up wid de harps an’ de banjos 


139 


THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 


dat he won’t think ob nuffin’ else; an’ Mistah 
Smith can ’joy hisself wid dat fust wife. 

“I’ll hab Caesah an’ I’ll hab Rosy, an’ we’ll 
hab a little mansion with a passion vine an’ 
roses roun’ de do’ ; an’ we’ll be happy for eb- 
ber an’ ebber. Glory! Glory!” 

The light that shone on the black face as she 
turned away was a token of faith and hope ; an 
outward sign of an inward grace the whitest of 
us seldom wear. 

Floating back to the room, like an echo of a 
thought, came a triumphant voice : 

“Dah ebahlasting spring abides, 

An’ nevah fading flowahs 


140 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 
RS. ABNER HALE and Mrs. Silas Ad- 



IV 1 ams walked slowly out Main street after 
the regular Thursday meeting of the Branchville 
Ladies’ Literary Circle. When these ladies 
organized their society they decided to call it a 
circle instead of a club, because the latter word 
sounded “so mannish, somehow.” 

“That was a beautiful paper of Alfaretta Mil- 
ler’s on theosophy,” Mrs. Hale remarked, in 
rather a questioning way. 

“Oh, lovely!” said her companion, in the 
tone women use when they wish to be agreeable, 
no matter what their real thoughts may be con- 
cerning the matter under discussion. “Yes, 
Alfaretta can write on most any subject. She’s 
got a good mind. She’s a credit to our Circle.” 

“What idea did you get from the paper?” 
pursued Mrs. Hale, hesitatingly, and then, with 
an impetuous outburst, “Martha Adams, what 
is theosophy, anyway?” 


141 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


“Land! Mrs. Hale, don’t ask me. I have 
n’t the faintest idea, and never expect to have, 
if I should hear a dozen papers. Alfaretta 
wanted me to be prepared to discuss the subject 
and loaned me a book to read up in, but it 
made me dizzy. I did copy a sentence or two 
out, though, that I meant to recite off at the 
proper time, just to show that I wasn’t ignorant, 
but I forgot it. To tell the truth, I kind of lost 
track of what she was saying in studying out 
just how the trimming was fixed on Jennie Wil- 
son’s new silk waist. I’m making one for my 
Sis, you know. Near as I can get at it, from 
all I’ve read and heard, theosophy is a sort of 
spiritualism that the heathen believe in and that 
our folks have taken up out of curiosity — sort of 
a moony, spooky thing, with spheres and ma- 
hatmas — whatever they are — and astral bodies, 
and ever-so- many- times- on-earth, and all that 
kind of foolishness. I ain’t sure that it’s quite 
the thing to talk about in our Circle. Some 
that’s not so well balanced as you and me might 
be influenced by it. Not but what there’s deep 
things that it would be real satisfying to know 
about. Sometimes I think there’s something 


142 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


genuine about spiritualism — the rapping and 
slate-writing kind.” 

Mrs. Hale looked at the speaker with an ex- 
pression of severe disapproval, but had no chance 
to utter a word of protest before that voluble 
lady began again. 

“Yes, I do, Mrs. Hale. Lemme tell you 
something. ’ ’ Here Mrs. Adams’s voice was low- 
ered to a confidential whisper, although no one 
was within sight or hearing. “The most of it’s 
foolishness, I’ll allow, and there’s a lot of hum- 
buggery about it, but there’s queer, unaccount- 
able things, too. Cousin Jim Lawson’s wife 
was telling me one of ’em the last time I was in 
Indianapolis. She’d been to visit a slate-writing 
medium and had had a communication from her 
mother, who’d died suddenly not long before 
when she was away from home on a visit. Cousin 
Jim’s wife couldn’t reconcile herself to having 
no last word, and so she went to this medium, 
who, it seems, is no common person, but a real 
lady. She’d always had the power, but only a 
few knew about it, and she never thought of 
earning money by it until after she was left a 
widow and had to do something to make a liv- 
ing for herself and little girl.” 

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AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


“Well” — and here the whisper grew more 
impressive — “Cousin Jim’s wife, she went and 
never told her name or anything, and right in- 
side of that double slate, with the medium’s hands 
laid flat on top in plain sight, came a message 
signed by her mother, Eunice Bascom, telling 
her she (Mrs. Bascom) was very happy, was 
glad to have the opportunity to talk to her and 
urge her to be reconciled, and also to tell her to 
give her (the mother’s) cashmere dress and her 
wrappers and aprons to Jane, the other daughter, 
and to keep the new black silk and the fur collar 
herself. Cousin Jim’s wife said you could a’ 
knocked her down with a feather. The thought 
had come to her several times that that would be 
a fair way to divide their mother’s things, seeing 
she had so much more use for dressy clothes 
than Jane, who lived in the country and never 
went anywhere, but she hadn’t had the clothes 
in mind that day at all, and had no notion any- 
thing would be said about them. It was a real 
comfort to her, though, to have what you might 
call official authority for disposing of the gar- 
ments, for she’d been a little afraid Jane would 
be inclined to complain; so she bought the slate 


144 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


with the writing on and took it home with her. 
Now, Mrs. Hale, wasn’t that remarkable?” 

“ It seems to me,” protested that lady in re- 
ply, ” that I shouldn’t like to have my mother 
come back from the other world to talk about 
clothes,” but as she was going on to express 
her fixed objection to such doings, such unholy 
tampering with sacred things, as she considered 
it, they reached Mrs. Adams’s gate, and that 
sprightly person, after unavailingly urging her 
companion to enter, hurried in, saying she would 
sew a little on Sis’s waist before dark. 

Mrs. Hale, who was not really a townswoman 
at all, but a farmer’s wife, and lived nearly a mile 
beyond the point where the highway ceased to 
be a street and became the pike, went leisurely 
on her way over the quiet country road, saying 
to herself, with a shake of the head, that Martha 
Adams was a good soul, but too ready to be- 
lieve everything she heard. Then her mind 
drifted to other matters. She always remem- 
bered her wandering thoughts of that afternoon, 
and sometimes spoke of them long after, as 
showing how little foreknowledge has the hu- 
man mind. She thought complacently of her 
own paper on the French Revolution, which she 
io 145 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


had read before the Circle the week previous. 
She was sixty years old and had never done 
such a thing before, and it was a great event in 
her life, but she told her husband, when it was 
over, that she didn’t see but what her piece was 
“full as good as the average.” She owned 
frankly that she got the most of it from the en- 
cyclopedia and the rest from an old magazine 
belonging to Joe, “ but, of course, they couldn’t 
expect me to write a thing like that out of my 
own head,” she said, “ and if I used the same 
language, why, what’s the difference? I’m sure 
I couldn’t have said it as well, and, anyway, it 
was all new to the Circle.” 

But the Circle soon passed into the back- 
ground on this autumn afternoon, and Joe, never 
far from the front in the mother’s mind, occu- 
pied her thoughts exclusively — Joe, the son of 
her old age, she called him. He was a young 
civil engineer, and through the influence of an 
instructor in the school of which he was a grad- 
uate had had the good fortune, as he considered 
it, to be made one of a government surveying 
party to Alaska that summer, starting in April. 
He was on his way home now. A letter had 
come from Seattle saying he had left the party, 
146 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


which was coming east over the northern route, 
and was about to go down the coast in a small 
sailing vessel, whose captain had happened 
to take a liking to him. He did this because it 
was inexpensive and he wanted a glimpse of Cal- 
ifornia, not knowing when he should visit the 
western coast again. He must have reached 
San Francisco by this time, his mother reflected, 
and another letter was nearly due, though pos- 
sibly he would not think it worth while to write, 
he was coming so soon himself. Mrs. Hale’s 
fond heart beat faster at the very thought of 
seeing her boy once more, and as she looked 
about her over the fields, golden with the Sep- 
tember sunshine, the sight, dear from long asso- 
ciation, seemed to take on a new charm. It was 
a beautiful world, she thought, not realizing that 
it was the contentment of her soul that made the 
Indiana landscape doubly fair. 

She entered the door of her home with a song 
in her heart and upon her lips. She put her 
bonnet carefully away, and, with a look at the 
clock to assure herself that she had yet a few 
minutes before it was time to prepare supper for 
Abner and the hired man, she sat down to rest 
and to glance at the paper she had brought 
147 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


from the post-office. She opened the sheet and 
looked over it with mild interest. What fate 
turned her eyes straight upon the obscure para- 
graph that in times of much news would have 
found no space in the inland paper? Thus 
blindly and unsuspectingly are we led into the 
tragedies of our lives. It was a brief dispatch, 
dated at San Francisco, and mentioning the sink- 
ing of the schooner Yakima through being run 
down by the steamship Montana. The Yakima 
was bound for San Francisco with a cargo of 
coal, and filled and sank so rapidly after the col- 
lision that only one person on board escaped. 
The Montana put out her boats and picked up 
one sailor, who reported that in addition to the 
crew the schooner had had on board one passen- 
ger, a man from Indiana named Hale. The cause 
of the accident would be investigated and the 
responsibility fixed, said the dispatch. 

The mind comprehends slowly the full mean- 
ing of death when a loved one has gone. It is 
only as weeks and months pass that the loss, the 
desolation, the awful loneliness are realized. 
Sitting with her paper in her hand that after- 
noon, Mrs. Hale saw her husband coming 
through the orchard, and her first conscious 
148 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


thought was one of pity for him that he had no 
son. Concerning her own bereavement she had, 
as yet, no sensation ; the sudden blow had 
made her numb. She watched him come slowly 
and heavily through the gate and up the walk — 
a gray-haired man, with bent shoulders, who 
had not kept his youthful elasticity as had his 
wife. 

“He has not many years of grief to bear,” she 
said, as she went out to him, bearing the mes- 
sage of evil. 

The history of the next few days she could 
hardly have told later. She went about her 
household tasks mechanically, for the living 
must eat and drink, though the best loved lie 
dead, but her mind wandered far and scarce 
knew what her hands did. There was a sending 
of telegraphic messages, a writing of letters and 
the gathering of all the information that could 
be secured, but this was little more than the first 
newspaper dispatch had contained. The Yakima 
had sunk, only one person on board had been 
picked up at the time — which was just after 
midnight on the 20th of September — and the 
sea being rough that night there was no proba- 
149 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


bility, even had any one been overlooked in the 
careful search made, that a survivor could have 
remained afloat till morning. 

Hope, catching at the faintest chance, died 
hard, but when weeks went by and brought no 
word Joseph Hale’s death was accepted as a 
certainty. His mother put on a black gown; 
his father went to and fro about his work with a 
look that made the neighbors say he was aging 
fast ; they tried to bear their affliction with the 
fortitude and resignation becoming to their 
Christian professions, but they knew that for 
them the zest of life had passed with their son’s 
going, and that the years to come must be en- 
dured, not enjoyed. They read the grief in 
each other’s eyes, but spoke little of it, Abner 
being taciturn at all times, and his wife, like so 
many men and women of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
never having learned to express her deepest 
emotions in words. 

One day in October services in memory of the 
young man were held in the Presbyterian church. 
Sympathy with the bereaved parents was deep, 
and the curious, but not unkindly, desire of 
their friends to see how they were affected by 
the remarks of the minister, and how they bore 
ISO 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


their sorrow, caused the emotion of a young wo- 
man near the door to go unnoticed. She was 
Nellie Hamilton, a teacher in one of the village 
schools. She and Joe Hale had known each 
other all their lives, and were on such friendly 
footing and so free from self-consciousness that 
no one had thought of them as lovers. She had 
been aware for a long time of the state of her 
own affections, but it was only a few days be- 
fore his departure that Joe had begun to learn 
where his heart belonged. She had seen the 
awakening in his eyes ; she had felt it in the 
subtle change of manner ; she had read his secret 
through the prescience of her own love, and her 
heart leaped in her bosom and was glad. He 
had not spoken before he went away, but she 
did not feel the less secure, for she saw also that 
he had not discovered her secret, and was in 
that state of doubt where he feared to test his 
fate. Maiden-like, and with a touch of coquet- 
ry, she had refrained from betraying a hint of 
the truth, coyly holding back, confident in the 
knowledge that when she chose to offer a sign 
he would come. Not long since had come a 
letter telling her that on his return he had a 
question to ask — one which he had “always 
151 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


thought a man ought to be brave enough to put 
to a woman face to face, and not by letter.” A 
reply would not have reached him had she writ- 
ten it, and now he was dead ; he was dead and 
would never know; was dead and she had not 
the right to weep for him, but must go about 
with calm face, for she had not let him speak, 
and he was not hers in the sight of the world. 
She envied his mother the liberty of tears, of 
outspoken grief and of unsmiling face. Life was 
bitter. 

The days went on drearily. Mrs. Hale neg- 
lected the Ladies’ Circle, the Missionary Society 
and all the various interests that had made her 
social world, and, shut in her rural home, 
brooded over her loss. October passed and 
November came, with heavier rains and more 
lowering clouds, it seemed, than ever Novem- 
ber had had before. Thanksgiving day ap- 
proached, and Mrs. Hale grew restless. On 
that day it had been the custom to invite to 
dinner all the kinfolk living thereabout, but this 
time she and her husband could not make fes- 
tivity for themselves or others. When the 
morning came Mrs. Hale arose and went about 
her tasks with an unusual look of determination. 
152 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


“Father/’ she said to her husband at break- 
fast, “I don’t feel as if I could go to our church 
this morning, and I am going into the city. I 
know you don’t want to go, so I sha’n’t ask 
you. I’ll come out on the one-o’clock train, 
which will give me time to have dinner by three. 
It’ll be a good dinner. I’ve fixed ready for it.’’ 

Abner offered no objection to the plan, but 
hitched up the horse and took his wife to the 
train, meeting her, also, upon her return. Her 
face bore a different expression, he noticed, 
from that it had worn in the morning — a brighter, 
more cheerful look. They chatted of various 
things on their way home — of Rev. Mr. Wil- 
letts’s sermon, which Abner had heard; of the 
music by the new choir, which Abner did not 
like, because he didn’t know what was being 
sung — tunes or words. 

“That Hamilton girl — Nellie is her name, 
isn’t it? — took sick in meeting,” he said casu- 
ally. “Screamed and had to be helped out to 
the air. Hystericky. I guess.” 

“Poor thing!” commented his wife. “I ex- 
pect she’s overworked and run down. I must 
ask her out to spend some Sunday. She and 
Joe used to be good friends.” 

153 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


They ate their Thanksgiving dinner rather 
silently and their thanks were not fervent, but 
perhaps the Lord forgave them, knowing their 
sore hearts. It was not till dinner was over and 
Abner’s chores done that Mrs. Hale disclosed 
the purpose of her morning’s visit to Indianap- 
olis and its result. It had not occurred to her 
husband’s rather slow-moving mind, until that 
moment, that she had as yet said nothing about 
it. He had assumed that she had attended a 
city church and had received consolation from 
the words of the pastor. If she was nervous 
over the confession of a different course of action 
she did not betray the feeling, but went boldly 
about it. 

“Father, I’ve got something to tell you. I 
went in town to-day and visited a spiritualist 
medium — a slate-writer. She didn’t know I was 
coming. She didn’t know my name. She didn’t 
ask a question, but she sat down at a little table, 
took this little folding slate that Johnny Miller 
left here (I carried it with me), laid her hands 
on it, never a minute out of my sight, and while 
I was looking the little pencil inside began to 
scratch, and when it stopped here was this writ- 


154 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


mg,” and Mrs. Hale produced the slate and 
began to read from its pages. 

“Dear Mother,” the writing ran. “Dear 
Mother: I am so glad you have come at last. 
Have been looking for you anxiously. I knew 
you grieved because I passed into the spirit 
world before you, and because you knew so lit- 
tle of the going, but I knew you never believed 
that one who had gone could ever return and 
talk to his friends, so was afraid the truth would 
not be impressed on you and you would not 
come. But it is true, mother. This is your 
own Joey boy. It was all true about the ship- 
wreck ; we went down without warning and were 
drowned. I didn’t have time to think about it, 
and you will be glad to know I didn’t suffer. I 
shouldn’t have wanted to go if I had known 
beforehand what was to happen, but it’s all 
right now. I am happy — perfectly happy. 
Everything is beautiful here. I can’t tell you 
just how it is, because we are not permitted, but 
you will know some day. Father isn’t looking 
well. Now that that affair of Lester’s is off his 
mind he ought to cheer up. Tell him not to 
fret about me. It’s all right. Come and talk 


155 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


to me again some day soon. Your loving son, 
Joseph Albert Hale.” 

Down in one corner was added : “What have 
you done with old Major? I don’t see him 
about.’ ’ 

Mrs. Hale read this communication, as she 
called it, slowly and impressively, but with vis- 
ible excitement and elation. Then she paused 
a moment for her husband to speak, but he re- 
mained silent, and she burst out : 

“Isn’t it wonderful, Abner? I know you 
never believed in spiritualism, and neither did 
I, but you can’t deny that there’s something in 
this. Why, here’s Joe’s very own handwriting, 
and his signature, with the quirl at the end that 
he always makes and his middle name written 
out in full. That was a notion he picked up 
when he was at school, but I never could get in- 
to the fashion of addressing his letters any other 
way than ‘J ose ph A.’ And in the letter he 
calls himself ‘Joey boy.’ I used to call him 
‘Joey,’ you know, for a pet name. And who 
but Joey could have mentioned that trouble with 
his cousin Lester, when only we four ever knew 
you got the young rascal out of a scrape, and 
you know very well none of us ever mentioned 

156 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


it — Lester least of all. Then, father, he says 
you are not looking well, which is true, and 
shows he must have seen you. Think of that! 
And he missed old Major. I never wrote to 
him that the dog had died; kind of hated to. I 
tell you, father, it's wonderful, wonderful! I 
never would have believed that I could have an 
atom of faith in spiritualism, and I must say that 
I wish Joe could communicate with us at first 
hand, and not through a total stranger. But 
this way is better than nothing, and what I’ve 
got here’s a great comfort to me. I’m going 
again, and if you — ” 

Abner’s face had slowly assumed an expres- 
sion that caused his wife to pause suddenly and 
observe him with some apprehension. He 
looked at her fixedly and sternly, then spoke with 
a voice trembling with anger : 

“Sarah Jane!” They addressed each other 
in the sweet, old-fashioned way, as “father” 
and “mother,” except on those occasions when 
storms loomed in the domestic sky. “Sarah 
Jane Hale, has it come to this, that you, a pro- 
fessing Christian for forty years, a member of 
the Presbyterian church in good standing; that 
you, the wife of a ruling elder, have taken up 
157 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


with this abominable witchcraft, and have the 
indecency to glory in it? Have you not read 
that the wrath of God comes upon those who 
practice such vile arts? Have you forgotten 
your religion? Do you care nothing for the 
safety of your immortal soul? I am shocked, 
Sarah Jane! I am astonished and grieved, and 
I insist that there shall be no more of this idola- 
trous business. It was thoughtlessness that led 
you to the den of the witch this time, may be, 
but the visit must not be repeated. I want you 
to promise not to go again, and I should like to 
hear you say you are sorry for this visit.’ ’ 

Mrs. Hale, after a gasp of surprise, got her 
breath and her bearings. 

“She is not a witch, but a respectable lady, 
I’d have you know, Abner Hale, and she doesn’t 
live in a den, but in a house that’s better than 
this one, and she’s a member of the Baptist 
church. And I wouldn’t be as narrow-minded 
and stiff-necked as you are for a farm. There’s 
things in this world that you haven’t found out 
yet, if you are a ruling elder; and, anyway, I 
won’t be dictated to just as if I were a disobedient 
child and had no judgment or rights of my own. 
You don’t seem to understand how I miss Joe. 

158 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


It was a real comfort to me, that letter from 
him, and I’m not sorry I went, and I shall go 
again if I want to. So there!” 

After which feminine outburst she threw her- 
self upon the lounge and sobbed with as much 
abandon as if she were ten years old instead of 
sixty. Abner was not moved to compassion by 
her tears. 

“Sarah Jane,” he said, solemnly, “I am dis- 
appointed. I have always considered you a sen- 
sible woman — one not likely to be led away 
from true Christian principles, though at times 
you haven’t been as faithful to the means of 
grace as would be becoming in an elder’s wife. 
I know Joe’s death was hard on you. He was 
was my son, too, but I haven’t found it neces- 
sary to consort with Satan’s emissaries for com- 
fort. This taking up with evil things is a mat- 
ter that calls for church discipline. It ought to 
he laid before the session, but I ain’t ready to do 
that yet, Sarah Jane. I want you to have time 
to consider the iniquity of your course before it 
is made public, and until you can realize it I 
sha’n’t speak a word to you, not a word from 
this hour.” 


159 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


Mrs. Hale dried her tears suddenly and sat 
up, looking at her husband with curiosity. 

“Are you six years old or sixty-five, Abner 
Hale, getting mad and ‘not speaking?’ ” she 
inquired, sharply. 

Abner deigned no reply, but wound the clock, 
kicked the cat out and slammed the door with 
more energy than was becoming to a ruling 
elder, then stalked majestically off to bed in 
silence. 

Mrs. Hale was not especially overcome by this 
exhibition of conjugal authority. The neigh- 
bors were wont to speak of Mr. Hale as “ terri- 
bly set in his ways and domineering.’’ On ac- 
count of these traits the women were inclined to 
congratulate themselves on not being married to 
him, but this feeling was not really a sound 
basis for an adverse verdict on his character. 
The disposition of women to wonder how other 
women can “ put up ’’ with their respective hus- 
bands arises, perhaps, out of feminine inability to 
comprehend thoroughly the idiosyncrasies of 
more than one man at a time. Not all wives are 
martyrs who seem so to outside eyes. At all 
events, Mrs. Hale had never so regarded her- 
self, and did not now. She had lived with Ab- 
160 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


ner for forty years and understood him. He 
had “ways,” and she had adapted herself to 
them, bringing him, in the long run, to her way 
of thinking; or, at least, so modifying his as- 
perities of thought and character as to make him 
quite satisfactory to her. She had never run so 
directly counter to his prejudices as in this case, 
but was not alarmed at his wrath and only mod- 
erately resentful. 

“ I didn’t suppose he’d take it so hard,” she 
said long afterward, “ but I might have remem- 
bered that he hadn’t been thinking the matter 
over for a month or so, as I had. I ought to 
have talked it up to him in advance and got him 
into the notion by degrees. Poor soul! He 
tried not to show it, but he grieved for Joe every 
day and all day while he was alone at his work, 
and his nerves were all wrought up. Women 
ain’t the only ones that get cross and crabbed 
from nervousness. However, I wasn’t going to 
give in right at once. I didn’t want him to think 
he could dictate to me that way. It doesn’t do 
to give a man such an advantage, even once.” 

Down in the village that Thanksgiving night, 
while this domestic episode took place in the 
farm-house, pretty Nellie Hamilton lay upon her 
1 1 161 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


bed with wide-open eyes, staring into the dark, 
her mind intent upon the experience of the 
morning. The choir had performed its final 
“voluntary,” the minister had just given out his 
text, “Let us come before His presence with 
thanksgiving,” and the congregation was settling 
itself into the pews, when choir, minister and 
people faded out of sight and she looked upon a 
far different scene — not only looked upon it, but 
seemed a part of it. There before her, almost 
at her feet, was a lake, half shadowed by a 
mountain, whose bare and rocky summit pierced 
the sky. A vivid green forest, whose appear- 
ance was strange and tropical, circled the water 
and was thick about her. In a little opening 
were two or three huts, and near them, swung 
between two trees, was a hammock, in which 
lay her lover, Joe Hale. Pale and ill he looked, 
but was unmistakably Joe. As she stood, or 
seemed to stand, ready to step forward to his 
side, so softly as not to awaken him, she became 
aware of a swarthy, half-clothed foreign-looking 
man slipping toward the hammock from the 
further side. His face wore an evil look, and 
he glanced furtively about. His hand crept 
toward the pocket in the breast of the flannel 
162 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


shirt worn by the occupant of the hammock, but 
the movement, soft as it was, roused the sleeper, 
and he started up. Quicker than it could be 
told, a bright blade flashed in the air, blood 
spurted over the sick man’s breast and he fell 
back as if dead. It was at this moment that 
Nellie Hamilton startled the congregation with a 
scream, and was assisted to her home under the 
belief that she was suddenly taken ill. 

Lying there, puzzling over it, she could not 
solve the mystery. It could not be a dream. 
She had just seated herself when the vision came, 
and had had no time in which to grow drowsy 
if she were so inclined. She was thinking of 
Joe at the time ; it was seldom in those days that 
he was far from her mind, but she pictured him 
as battling with fierce waves, and as sinking 
slowly, surely, and, at last, despairingly, into 
their cruel depths — a hideous vision that haunted 
her, awake or asleep. She had never associated 
him with far southern lands ; she had never been 
outside of her own state of Indiana, yet she knew 
that an actual tropical landscape could never be 
more real to her than this phantasmal scene of 
the morning. She could almost see it yet — the 
shining green of trees, whose names she did not 
163 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


know, the vines that stretched from branch to 
branch like great serpents, the rank undergrowth, 
the intense blue of the sky, the mountain, with 
its upper height a bare, stony peak. What did 
it mean? She remembered hearing her Scotch 
grandfather talk mysteriously of second sight, 
but had never troubled herself to know just what 
he meant, and she had never before had an ex- 
perience like this. Besides, if Joe had been 
drowned in the Pacific, and he must have been 
drowned, or he would have been heard from long 
ago, this vision must have been a delusion. 
Could she be losing her mind? she wondered 
drearily, and fell at last into troubled sleep. 

The days and weeks dragged slowly by, 
Abner Hale kept strictly to the letter of his 
threat to speak no word to his wife until she 
showed signs of repentance for what he con- 
sidered her ill conduct. She addressed him 
freely when occasion required, and sometimes 
when it did not, but he made the hired man his 
medium of communication, directing his re- 
marks ostensibly to that personage, but really 
to Mrs. Hale; and the hired man, being but a 
stupid creature, concerned more with eating all 
that was set before him than with what went on 
164 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


in the house, never discovered that he was used 
as a convenience. With neighbors who drop- 
ped in Abner talked freely and even eagerly, 
which, in view of his usual taciturnity, caused 
them some surprise. Once his wife detected 
him furtively examining the slate containing 
Joe’s letter, which she kept in a drawer of Joe’s 
old desk, but he showed no sign of interest 
when she made another visit to the city, and he 
had reason to assume that she again visited the 
woman he had denounced as an agent of the 
evil one. 

She did, in fact, visit that person, not once, 
but twice or more, as the holidays drew near, 
and she felt the need of aid in resisting the de- 
pressing influences of other people’s gayety. 
Each time was repeated, with somewhat greater 
amplification, the story that had been told on 
the slate the first day. Each time some allus- 
ions were made or questions asked which con- 
vinced her anew that Joe’s spirit must inspire 
the pencil’s movements, since none but he and 
herself had knowledge of the matters involved. 
Each time came the assurance afresh that the 
unseen writer was Joe, her son, come back to 
her in this way from the other world. She 

165 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


could not doubt that this was true, but some- 
how the slate writings did not continue to be 
the comfort to her that she had first found them. 
There was a consciousness of something lacking, 
something unsatisfactory; there was a barrier 
between her and her son that she could not 
overcome. He told her so little, after all. It 
dawned on her one day that he had really writ- 
ten nothing that she had not herself known or 
believed before. She was thinking of this as 
she left the station one afternoon on her way 
home from one of these visits, and had won- 
dered if it would not be just as well to fall in 
with Abner’s notions and tell him she was will- 
ing to give up the medium. “But I won’t do 
it just yet,” she decided. “He hasn’t been 
behaving well, and I don’t want to encourage 
him in such doings by giving in so easily. He 
ought to come half way, anyhow, and I think 
he will before long. He’s getting very un- 
easy.” 

Nevertheless, she sighed as she thought of her 
silent home, and when she chanced to meet Nel- 
lie Hamilton, something wistful in the girl’s face 
attracted her notice and she urged her to accom- 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


pany her to the farm. Visitors were always 
welcome now. 

“Come out and spend the afternoon with me, 
and if, as you say, you must be home to-night, 
Abner will bring you.” 

It was the last day of the year, but the clear, 
crisp air and the bright sunshine brought sug- 
gestions of spring, and both women felt cheered 
in a vague way when they reached the country 
home. Mrs. Hale talked to Nellie of her lost 
son that afternoon, and found a sympathetic lis- 
tener. She related anecdotes of his boyhood ; 
she brought out the tintypes and photographs 
he had had taken at various stages of his career ; 
she showed specimens of his handiwork about 
the house ; she told how thoughtful and consid- 
erate he was always and what a source of com- 
fort. But with all the confidences bestowed she 
did not mention her visits to the medium or the 
story on the slate ; all that was too intimate an 
experience to relate to this girl, who, for all her 
evident appreciation of Joe, might have an igno- 
rant prejudice against spiritualistic manifesta- 
tions. She had had it herself not so long ago. 
Nor did Nellie Hamilton venture to tell the elder 


167 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


woman of her vision on Thanksgiving day, nor 
of the later one the day before Christmas. 

It rained on the latter occasion, and as she 
stood on the school-house step, looking up the 
dreary street, after the children had gone home, 
suddenly street and houses vanished, the dark 
sky cleared, and before her stretched a wide 
sweep of gray, sandy desert, patches of gray- 
green vegetation only adding to the dreariness; 
not far distant were barren hills, and beyond 
them arose mountains, gray, too, and craggy, 
with lines of white near their summits, glittering 
in the pitiless sunshine. Almost at her feet lay 
a horse, gasping as if for breath, his tongue, 
cracked and bleeding, hanging from his mouth. 
Near him a man was stretched face downward 
on the sand. As she looked he raised his head, 
and, with dull eyes, gazed drearily about, but 
she had not needed the movement to know that 
the man was Joe Hale. He was gaunt of 
frame, but his face was brown, not white, as she 
had seen it the other time, and there was a red 
scar on his forehead not there before. The gray 
desert stretched away until it melted into the 
horizon line, and no other creature was in sight 
in all its space. But while she looked, and be- 
168 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


fore she could take the one step forward that 
seemed to divide her from the man she loved, 
the scene was changed, and she stood upon the 
school-house steps, staring blankly into the mud- 
dy street of Branchville. 

She began to be afraid of herself, and would 
have liked to take Joe’s mother into her confi- 
dence and ask what these visions could mean, 
but had not the courage. So the two women 
talked together about one who was so dear to 
both, and each kept from the other her closest 
thoughts concerning him . After supper, when the 
guest would go, pleading duties that demanded 
her attention in the early New Year’s morning, 
Abner entreated delay, and as they sat about 
the fire he, too, conscious of sympathy, fell to 
relating stories of the dear lost son. And while 
they talked the gate opened, a step was heard 
on the walk, then on the porch, and Mrs. Hale, 
her face suddenly radiant with hope and joy, 
rose swiftly, and before he could touch the latch 
opened the door to her son. The intuition of 
the mother rose superior at this moment to the 
mysterious power that brought visions from far 
off to the younger woman. 

There were laughter and tears, kisses and 
169 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


embraces, and if the visitor shared these neither 
father nor mother stopped to wonder. There 
were incoherent questions and answers when all 
talked at once and no one listened ; there was 
silence of deep emotion as the parents looked 
upon their boy, who had been lost and was 
found, and put their hands upon him again and 
again to be convinced anew that he was truly in 
the flesh. And when the excitement quieted 
they all gathered close while Joe told them the 
story of his adventures ; how he had been ship- 
wrecked, as they had read in the papers; how 
the steamship had made little effort instead of 
much to save its victims ; how he had clung to 
a floating plank till morning and had been 
picked up by a tramp boat which had mysterious 
errands, whose nature he did not inquire, to 
Central American ports, and was anxious to 
avoid California harbors for reasons that he sus- 
pected to have connection with customs officers. 

He told how, at his own solicitation, he was 
put ashore at the first Guatemalan port, and 
how, instead of being able to work his way back 
to San Francisco, as he had hoped, being with- 
out money after the shipwreck, he fell ill with 
fever and would have fared badly but for a party 
I/O 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


of American miners and prospectors, themselves 
scant of funds, who ran across him, doctored 
him, and took him far into the interior before 
he fairly realized their kind purpose. They 
were going north overland in search of one of 
the famous lost mines of Mexico, to whose loca- 
tion they thought they had a clew. It was a 
wild country they traveled through, and their 
journeying was slow. They did not come near 
the civilization of which railroad trains and tele- 
graph wires were a part, and so he wrote no let- 
ters, but looked forward to the day when he 
should reach home in person, and fretted that 
progress was so slow. 

“I had one or two close calls,’ ’ he said light- 
ly, with the disregard for dangers past common 
to the young. “While I was lying in a ham- 
mock one day (it was the Thanksgiving day here, 
by the way, and I was dreaming of home), a 
Mexican thief crept up and gave me this,” 
touching a scar on his forehead, “and another 
on my shoulder. He aimed at my heart, of 
course, and it’s a wonder he missed. And only 
last Monday, just a week ago to-day, I thought 
I was gone. I had left my friends to their rain- 
bow chasing and started to make the rest of the 
171 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


way to Tucson alone. I wandered off the trail, 
my skeleton of a horse broke down — we were both 
famished for water — and I thought for a bit that 
the jig was up. But while I was on the sand 
thinking the matter over, what did I hear — or, 
rather, feel — but the faint jarring of a railroad 
train and the echo of a far-off whistle ! It was 
miles away, but I knew I was all right. It was 
the sweetest music I ever heard. Actually, the 
old horse pricked up his ears, scrambled to his 
feet and jogged on. We struck the track after 
two or three hours and followed it to a station. 
From there I got to Tucson, where Tom Bailey, 
my old room-mate, is, and he lent me money to 
get home with. So here I am.” 

The women shuddered at the tale, and looked 
upon this youth, who talked so carelessly of his 
perils, as a hero of heroes. 

The hour grew late, and Nellie, making a 
movement of withdrawal, found Joe eager with 
his proposal to accompany her. She was un- 
willing to disturb the family group, but read en- 
treaty in the young man’s eyes, and so declined 
her hostess’s invitation to remain. They scorned 
the thought of driving, and went out gayl y to 
walk the short mile on the highway, that was 
172 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


to them that night a path to paradise. Under 
the moonlit sky Joe asked her the question he 
had said ought never to be written, and she 
whispered her answer so low that even the owl 
blinking in the tree overhead could not hear. 
But Joe heard. 

As they loitered down the road, unmindful 
that it was the season of frost and not of roses, 
she told him of her visions, and a wonder fell upon 
them that she had seen so true. Yet, after all, 
they reflected, with the beautiful confidence of 
youth in the supreme power of love, it was not 
so strange that two souls in such harmony as 
theirs should come to each other across the 
world . As they looked up at the starry sky think- 
ing of this, heaven seemed very near, and they 
caught a glimpse of its mysteries. Then the 
bells rang that ushered in a new year, and they 
felt that it was the beginning of life for them. 

Back in the farm-house another subject was 
under discussion. Mrs. Hale had stood in the 
doorway looking after her son with a pang at 
her heart in spite of her joy at his return. Sud- 
den insight had come to her, and she knew that 
though the lost was found he would never be all 
173 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


her own again. She sighed as she shut the 
door and turned, with absent-minded gaze, to- 
ward her husband. He sat by the fire, with a 
hand on each knee and a puzzled expression 
on his face. Through all the confusion and 
excitement of the evening he had remained 
faithful to his promise, and had not addressed a 
word to his wife, but now, without preamble, 
and as if no silence had intervened, he began: 

“Mother, what do you reckon it was that 
made the writing on them slates at Madame 
Victorine’s?” 

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It cer- 
tainly wasn’t Joe, for he didn’t get drowned 
and he wasn’t dead, and still some of the things 
written were family matters no one could have 
knowledge of but one of us three. But it wasn’t 
Madame Victorine; it was Mrs. Mary Ellen 
Johnson who was the medium.” Then, with 
the swift intuition of a woman who reads her 
husband like a book: “Abner Hale, I believe 
you went to visit Madame Victorine yourself to 
get slate writings, or you wouldn’t know any- 
thing about her! You did. I know by your 
sheepish look you did. Madame Victorine, of 
all creatures, too ! Why, she isn’t a decent 
174 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


woman, if all they say’s true; five or six hus- 
bands, and nobody knows where one of ’em is, 
or whether they’re alive or dead. You ought 
to be ashamed of yourself — an elder in the 
church. And all the time holding off from 
speaking to your own wife.” 

Abner got in a word here. 

“I wanted to investigate a little on your ac- 
count, and I thought you mentioned Madame 
Victorine,” he urged, feebly. 

“My account — nothing!” was her scornful 
ejaculation. 4 ‘You were just filled with curiosity, 
for one thing, and a desire to hear from Joe, for an- 
other — don’t deny it ! And not speaking a word 
to me for a whole month, and talking of church 
discipline! Huh!” 

Abner had risen to his feet and affected a 
dignity it was obvious he did not altogether feel. 

“Well, mother,” he said, in a conciliatory 
tone, but with the masculine reluctance to own- 
ing himself in the wrong clearly apparent ; ‘ ‘well, 
mother, I guess we haven’t either of us done 
anything we want to talk about before folks. It 
looks as if the devil was in the thing, anyway, 
as I told you at first. I guess we’d better say 


175 


AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 


nothing about the matter to any one — to any one, 
not even to Joe.” 

She looked at him intently and reflected for a 
moment, then laughed a little, not being without 
humor. 

“I guess so, too,” she said. 

And she never did mention the affair to any 
one but Joe, who, of course, told his wife. 


1 76 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 

W ERE you ever at Michigan City, in Indi- 
ana? Stop! Let me put the question 
more carefully. Were you ever compelled to 
wait for a train at Michigan City? The first in- 
quiry sounds innocent enough, but a Hoosier 
would detect a covert insult in it. Why? Be- 
cause one of the three state penitentiaries is sit- 
uated there and is the town’s chief distinc- 
tion to the outside public. A native of the 
state living elsewhere can conceive of no reason 
why a man should voluntarily take up his resi- 
dence in the place, or even why he should 
‘ ‘ stop off, ’ ’ except to visit some erring and 
unfortunate relative. Hence, to avoid trouble, 
those persons in search of local information do 
well to be on their guard. 

I had passed through, many times, on my 
way to and from Chicago, but until this trip had 
12 1 77 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


never taken closer observations than through 
the car windows. To-day the “lightning ex- 
press ” on the Michigan Central road was three 
hours too early for the one train that in those 
days — some years ago now — daily jogged along 
down the road leading south. What should I 
do with the time? I looked into the waiting- 
room of the station. No passenger had left the 
train but myself, and the place was empty save 
for an old couple, who had evidently just come in 
from the country. 

I went out and explored the town. Up one 
street and down another I strolled, until the cir- 
cuit was made. In every direction was sand — 
mountains of sand, valleys of sand. It was in 
drifts upon the sidewalks, in hillocks in the 
streets. The houses were built upon it. Many 
dwellings leaned from the perpendicular at va- 
rious angles, according to their age, the shifty 
foundations had so worn away and blown away. 
Though it was a bright April day but few 
people were on the street, and these seemed in 
haste to disappear as soon as seen. It may 
have been a biased imagination that saw this, or 
the cause may have been the chill lake wind. 

Was it fancy, too, that made the women and 
178 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


children, visible here and there at the windows, 
seem to draw back, as if to hide? The scatter- 
ing tufts of grass in the front yards seemed 
to have given over the ambition to cover the 
earth with green, and were creeping under the 
sand. Did I imagine a burden in the air, as of 
grief or guilt? The shadow of the prison seemed 
to hover over the place. It grew oppressive. 

In desperation, I resolved to climb the near- 
est sand-hill and view the world from that 
eminence. Perhaps I might find an elevation 
of spirits when I could survey the prospect 
from above. Were not poets always telling us 
to commune with nature, and thereby escape 
from fret and care; to seek the solitude of a 
height and see the earth grow fair beneath our 
feet, the mists and clouds melt into sunlight? 
Laboriously I crept and scrambled up the slip- 
pery side of that miserable hill. From the foot 
it had not looked far to the summit — perhaps 
not over one hundred feet — nor yet steep ; but 
with each step forward and each slip back it 
seemed to grow, until, when half way up I 
stopped to breathe, it loomed above me like a 
mountain. Out to the north was Lake Mich- 
igan, blue and cold. Far distant could be seen 

179 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


the smoke of steamers ; nearer, the white wings 
of sail-boats; but all were outward bound. 

Along the shore the sand dunes stretched 
for miles. Once, long ago, the lake is said to 
have covered this ground. Having been given 
up by water, the earth had not had thrift to re- 
claim the waste. Even the idle train of vagrant 
weeds had not wandered in to hide the barren- 
ness. Beyond the town rose the grim, bare 
walls of the prison. Hundreds of men in- 
side were wearing out the long hours of weary 
days in toil that was heavy and bitter, because 
it was enforced. Deprived of freedom of will, 
of liberty of body, without hope for the future, 
they waited — for what? For release from bond- 
age, to spend the remnant of their lives as Ish- 
maelites, followed in the world by sneers and 
suspicion, or received, if at all, with a virtuous 
condescension no easier to bear. Probably they 
deserved their fate. Some of those men had 
stolen, some had forged, some had murdered; 
and the way of the transgressor was hard, we 
were told. It was right that they should suffer, 
then ; but we Pharisees, were we without sin, 
that we should cast a stone? Had we not done 
those things that we should not, left undone that 
180 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


which we should? Perhaps, my friend, yon 
took advantage of a man’s need and made an 
unrighteous profit. Did you not foreclose a 
mortgage and distress a debtor, when you could 
have waited? Perhaps you did not love your 
neighbor, or, may be, you loved his wife too 
well. Such things had been known. Perhaps — 
but the catalogue was long. Because the law had 
not touched us, were we to proscribe those on 
whom its finger was laid? Life was bitter at best. 
What were we, good Lord, that we should take 
all the sweet of existence from any man? 

This little sermon I preached to myself, for 
lack of a better audience ; but the wind was too 
keen to encourage moralizing. What should 
I gain by climbing to the top of this hill? Each 
step higher would only show a wider sweep of 
desolation. Why should I emulate the young 
man of Alpine fame? He was a foolish youth 
and came to an untimely end. I had no ambi- 
tion ; besides I had brought no banner to plant 
at the top to commemorate my deed. It was a 
gloomy world. Nothing was worth while. I 
would go down. 

The descent was rapid and undignified. Eyes, 
ears and clothing were full of sand. To such 
1 8 1 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


irritation of mind had I come that I felt ready 
for reckless deeds, but I swallowed wrath and 
sand together and walked on. 

Suddenly, in a sunny corner, between a pile 
of railroad ties and another of fragrant pine lum- 
ber, I came upon the old couple whom I had seen 
at the station. There they were — she with a nap- 
kin spread upon her lap and nibbling daintily at a 
bit of cake ; he helping himself freely to sand- 
wiches or chicken, now from the lap that served 
as table, now from the basket at their feet. In- 
voluntarily, I paused ; perhaps, to apologize for 
the intrusion, perhaps, attracted by the people 
themselves, or drawn, maybe (who knows?) by 
the luncheon. Who can tell afterward just how 
an acquaintance began? In ten minutes we 
were chatting briskly, and I was cheerfully help- 
ing to empty that lunch basket. I think the 
wife opened the conversation by saying that they 
had seen me climb the hill, and only wished 
themselves a little younger, that they might do 
the same. 

No one is so charming to a traveler as a 
woman, young or old, who knows when and 
how to dispense with formality, and talk kindly, 


182 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


yet with dignity, to a stranger. It is a rare 
grace, however, I have come to know. 

If my old lady whom I met that day on the 
sand told too much of her own story, it was 
not her fault, but mine. I asked questions now 
and then to lead her on. As we talked about 
the weather, of the trains, of the time — drifting 
along in the shallows of conversation as strangers 
do — I became slowly conscious of a something 
out of the common in the manner of these old 
people. Just what it was was hard to define. 
There was nothing at all remarkable in their 
personal appearance. He was tall, spare, with 
a mild, benevolent face, and it needed only one 
glance to be assured that he was a minister of 
the Gospel. A Presbyterian minister I would 
have said, judging from a certain stiffness of car- 
riage and gentle dignity, as well as from the ex- 
treme neatness of his well-worn garments. With 
a little surprise, I learned that he was, as he 
put it, “the Lord’s servant in the Methodist vine- 
yard” — Methodists of the old school whom I 
had heretofore met being noticeable rather for 
a carelessness of dress and a soldierly bearing, 
as of those who had conquered men. His wife 
was a slender, nervous little body; one of the 

183 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


women who in these days are called “delicate” 
and of whom little is expected ; one of those who, 
when the tests of'life come, sometimes develop a 
power of endurance, mental and physical, mar- 
velous to see. 

“No, we don’t live here,” she said. “We 
have been spending a day in the country with 
some old friends, but we came up to see a young 
man who is in prison for murder. He was a 
school-mate of our son Gabriel, and had the 
making of a man ; but he took a wild and reck- 
less turn as he grew up, and never got on the 
right track again till now.” 

“You smile,” said the old minister; “but 
you know that building is a place of bondage 
and of punishment for breaking our laws only, 
and not God’s laws. If a man steal, we shut 
him up to teach him that he shall not touch our 
property; but, unless he repent of his sin, I 
hold that the Lord will punish him still, the 
same as if we had let him go free. This boy 
drank to excess, he quarreled, and the jury 
found that he had killed a man. For the sake 
of his dead mother and of our son, who is dead 
and had loved him, we came to see if we could 
help him on the way to be forgiven ; and the 
184 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


good God has blessed us. We found him wretched 
and without hope. We could give no comfort ; we 
could only pray for help, and the comfort came. 
Before we came away he began to feel that there 
was mercy waiting for him. A little light shone 
out of the darkness; just a glimpse of the glory 
beyond. It is not for me to say that he was 
more guilty than another ; but we all have need 
of grace. Cynthy and I pray that the little 
grain of faith in that boy’s heart may take deep 
root, until he can bear his punishment with 
patience ; until he can say with humility, 
* Though He slay me, yet will I trust in 
Him.’” 

“It made my heart ache to leave him,” said 
Mother Ellis (I knew her pet name must be 
“Mother,” it fitted so well); “but God, who 
has been so good to us, has pity for him.” 

There was no want of reverence in this con- 
tinual allusion to the Almighty; no cant, no 
grating familiarity. This old couple talked of 
Him as of a revered friend, with whom they 
had constant intercourse and in whom they had 
utter faith. Their simplicity was unworldly and 
beautiful. 

“The folks down to Freedom, where we’ve 

185 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


been living lately, wanted us to go to Chicago 
and see the sights, while we were so near; but 
John and I we’re /too anxious to get home.” 
Here she looked at John and blushed, and he 
took her hand in his. They were like a pair of 
young lovers. It was curious. 

Presently she went on, with a contented sigh, 
as if the little by-play needed some explanation : 

“You see, John and I, we’re going home — 
to a home of our own — for the first time in our 
lives, though we’ve been married forty years 
come June. Forty years! It’s a long time, 
looking at it some ways; but again it only seems 
a little while since we were youngand lived ’way 
back in York state. Those hills and woods were 
pretty to look at. I’ve never seen their like 
since. Maybe it’s wicked, but I always think o’ 
the hills ’round the New Jerusalem as being like 
those about the head-waters o’ the Allegheny. 
Like as not, though, the New York hills have 
been cleared and ‘improved’ till they’re bare 
enough and ugly ; but I’ve no fine words to tell ye 
how they used to look to me. I’ve learned now to 
see beauty in a level country ; but it took a long 
while. When we first came to Indiana, John 
and I, seemed as if I couldn’t any way get used 
186 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


to the low land . Do you remember Chestnut Hill, 
John, over toward Cattaraugus? If I were one 
o’ the painter folks I could make a picture of it 
now. There was a tall, dead tree at the very 
top, with two branches reaching out like arms, 
making a cross that could be seen for miles. 
When I was young and foolish, I used to wish I 
were a Roman Catholic, that I might go and 
pray at the foot of that tree rather than in 
church.” 

“ I don’t remember about the hills being so 
pretty — ’bout the same as others, I guess,” said 
unpoetical John; “but I reck’lect the road 
through the pine woods. Do you, Cynthy? ” 

Again the faded eyes of both brightened with 
love that is ever young. Again came the blush 
on the wife’s wrinkled cheek, and this time John’s 
feeble arm went around her waist. There was 
silence for a little space ; but I doubt not the air 
was filled with the fragrance of the pine forest, 
that their ears heard the murmur of the trees. 
Once more they listened with their hearts to the 
words of long ago, which had made that wood- 
land path so fair a memory. 

“When I first knew John he taught our dis- 
trict school, and used to come to my Uncle 
187 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


Isaac’s pretty often. Teachers boarded around 
in those days, and I did think he took his turn 
at Uncle’s pretty loften. I knew he was a pious 
young man, who’d had a call to be a preacher, 
and, like a silly girl, was a little afraid of him 
and didn’t want to see him. He stayed all sum- 
mer when there was no school, helping my 
uncle and the neighbors in haying and harvest, 
studying between times. In those days the 
best of men worked in the harvest-field. Be- 
fore early apples were ripe I mistrusted what 
was keeping him, and somehow I had got all 
over being afraid of him. I had found out that 
he was an orphan, like myself, and had no home. 
I was only staying with Uncle Isaac, and it must 
have been that which made my mind turn to- 
ward him. But he never said anything, John 
didn’t; only kept hanging ’round and looking 
as if he wanted to speak. John was bashful ; 
but, though I’ve heard o’ men too bashful to 
ask a girl to marry ’em, I never knew one, and 
I guess John ’u’d a plucked up courage after 
awhile, even if the revival hadn’t come. ’Long 
in October Brother Duzan came along through 
that region, and held meetings that were power- 
fully blessed. It was early in the season for a 
1 88 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


revival ; but everybody turned out to the meet- 
ings at our school-house. I had never ex- 
perienced religion then, though Uncle Isaac 
often made me the subject of prayer. I was 
giddy and thoughtless, and, like many another, 
I couldn’t or, rather, wouldn’t see how good 
the Lord was to me. 

“Well, I went with the rest to the meetings; 
but my heart was hard. Seemed as if it grew 
harder the more the brethren and sisters prayed 
and exhorted, though all the young folks I knew 
were going forward to the mourners’ bench and 
were being converted. One night Brother Du- 
zan preached his dreadful sermon on future pun- 
ishment of the godless, that he always kept for 
the crowning effort. He told, in awful words, 
how the unconverted sinner would finally suffer 
and burn in endless torment, and everybody was 
crying and groaning but myself. That threat 
couldn’t soften me then, and I’m free to confess 
has no effect now. Then John, he led in prayer. 
His voice was so soft and gentle that it hushed 
the excitement. He besought the tender Shep- 
herd, who loved all His sheep, to look with spe- 
cial care upon the playful lambs, whose willful 
feet refused to follow whither they were led ; to 
189 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


draw them back with merciful hands before they 
should learn, too late, that only the narrow, 
rocky path led tc\ the green pastures that were 
beside still waters. 

“I knew he prayed for me, and my heart was 
melted then; and, for fear the tears would come, 
I slipped out of the door, while the rest were on 
their knees. But John saw me — though how he 
could, with his back turned, I never knew — and 
I didn’t get far into the pine woods alone. He 
began where the prayer had stopped. ‘The 
Lord was waiting,’ he said, ‘for me to stretch 
out my hands, and He would take me into the 
blessed fold.’ And I? What should I do but 
cry, as a woman always does when she should 
not. Then John, to comfort me, began to tell 
how God loved me; and from that, some way, 
it was easy to say how — well, no, John, I shan’t 
tell what you said then, and don’t you, either. 
I kind o’ forgot for a minute that we were not 
alone, and was thinking out loud, I guess. I 
hope our friend will excuse me, for when she 
comes to be old such places in her life will stand 
out clear in her memory, where many another 
important thing has faded away. 

“The next night I went to meeting, and made 
190 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


a profession of religion. What could I do but 
praise the Lord for being so good to me, who 
was so undeserving. Had he not given me 
John, and what was I that such a blessing should 
be mine?” 

Here, the mild eye of Reverend John looked 
at me over his wife’s head with a mischievous 
twinkle. As she went on, however, his face 
resumed its serenity. 

‘ ‘We have lived many years since then. Some- 
times the way has been rough and hard. We have 
had trials and losses ; but mercy and goodness have 
followed us, for we have borne the burdens to- 
gether. I can confess now, though I never said so 
to John, that one of the heaviest crosses of my 
life has been the wish for a home. When we 
were married, I knew that I was taking an 
itinerant Methodist preacher for better or worse 
(it has always been the better, never the worse, 
John) ; but I could not know till I had tried it 
what a wandering, unsettled life it was. Dif- 
ferent in the early days from now, too. When 
we came out here, it was looked upon as more 
of an undertaking than going to Europe now. 
There were no railroads then running here and 
there across the country ; so we came by water 
191 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


on a flat-boat to Pittsburgh and in a steamboat 
from there. Stopped at Cincinnati to see the 
sights. It was r\ fine city then, but they say 
it’s grown since. 

“Daughter, a volume would not hold our ex- 
perience of forty years. We have been sojourn- 
ers, never long in one place. It’s only of late 
years, you know, that Methodist ministers are 
allowed to labor more than two years in one 
church. Then there was the loneliness; for 
sometimes John would be gone on the circuit, 
away from his family for weeks at a time. I 
could not go, because of the children. We 
have been here and there, here and there, and 
used to live in pretty wild places, with few 
neighbors.” 

John took up the thread here: “I never 
was what is called a popular preacher,” he said, 
with a gentle smile. “I tried to do my duty — 
the Lord knows that; but the people would 
sometimes grow anxious about building up the 
church, and would want a man who could bring 
in large accessions to the membership. I tried 
to win souls to the Master, with His help; but, 
though I trust my sheaves will contain more 
than weeds, the harvest in my field has been 
192 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


less abundant than in many. The elders and 
bishops are judges of men, and they stationed 
me where I could do best, no doubt. Latterly, 
some have told me that people nowadays do not 
like to hear so much about Christ and Him 
crucified, that they prefer the religion of 
humanity, and that I should adapt my style to 
the times; but it is too late. I am too old to 
learn a new religion or to sugar-coat or rarefy 
the old one. It was a lack of faith, I fear, that 
caused a disappointment when they sent me to 
an obscure corner, a by-way, as sometimes they 
did. It was all the Master’s vineyard, and I 
should have worked without a murmur; but I 
thought too much, perhaps, about the little 
earthly reward and that I could make no pro- 
vision for old age. We knew the Lord had 
always been good to us, Cynthy. We should 
have trusted Him in this, for He had never failed 
us and He never will. ‘Underneath us are the 
everlasting arms.’ ” 

“Yes,” said Cynthy, “the Lord has provided 
for us. We are to have a home of our own in 
our old age; a home where our children can 
come to visit us or to stay. As I said, I couldn’t 
complain. It was the will of Heaven that we 
13 193 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


should live as sojourners. We could not set our 
hearts upon this house or that tree, as people 
will. The room where the son died or the 
daughter married could not be kept sacred, for 
we must leave them; the roses and the vines 
which we might plant would grow to gladden 
other eyes than ours. Such worldly affections 
do not seem wrong; but they might have been 
a snare to us. For a year or two John has been 
so afflicted with rheumatism that he could not go 
about, and has been put on the superannuated 
list. 

“If you know anything about Methodists, you 
know they do not contribute to the fifth col- 
lection as liberally as to some others, and the 
fund forworn out ministers is small. I suppose 
they do not realize the needs of any one so near 
them. We have always lived on a little — no 
one knows so well as a Methodist preacher’s 
family how to make much out of nothing; 
but of late we have been sore pressed. Our 
children — only five are living out of ten — are 
scattered far and wide. Two are missiona- 
ries in India; two are teaching in the south, and 
our oldest son, a farmer in Texas, is the only 
one who is at all forehanded. He has wanted 
194 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


us to make our home with him ; but we couldn’t 
quite make up our minds. Seemed as if we 
couldn’t quite give up to go so far and get used 
to new things and a new country. Old people 
get dreadful set in their ways, you know. 

“It had got to look, though, as if the Lord 
meant that we should go, and we were beginning 
to make our plans and to talk of a few farewell 
visits we must make. 

“We have some old friends we should want to 
see once more, and we must take another look at 
the graves where our children were laid at rest. 
It had come to be about settled that we were 
to go. The Gosport Howitzer had mentioned 
it in its personal column, saying we should be 
greatly missed, when a letter came telling us the 
Widow Green up at Arcady had died and left us 
her property. We’d been up to see Mrs. Green 
not long before, and she talked then of leaving 
what she had to the Foreign Missionary Society, 
and we never once thought of her mentioning us 
in her will. But she did leave us the home. 
Not much, maybe you’d say — its only a little 
cottage and an acre o’ ground ; but it’s a home, 
for all that, an’ I’ve wanted one for so many 
years. 


195 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


“We regret the Widow Green, of course. She 
was a good Christian woman, though a trifle 
irritable; but she’d been bedridden and so af- 
flicted for many a day that it was her desire to 
go whenever the call should come. We shall 
have no care for ourselves the rest of our days, 
for the future is provided for. We are such 
weak creatures that faith is not always strong 
enough to take no thought for the morrow. We 
want a sign — something we can see and touch. 

“Is it wrong, I wonder, to think so much about 
worldly things? I have planned how every 
room shall look. I have seeds of all the flowers 
I can find like the ones that grew in the yard 
when I was a girl. We shan’t have very much 
money; but, with our share of the Retired 
Preachers’ Fund and with our garden, we shall 
have enough. I’m spry if I be old, and always 
had a knack at making things grow. John’s 
a master hand to work in the garden, too, when 
he’s well. I tell John (don’t laugh at a foolish 
old woman) — I tell John that this is like a wed- 
ding journey. We traveled a long way when 
we were married; but we didn’t reach the home 
for forty years. John is as anxious to get there 
as I, but is more sensible and not so impatient. 
196 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


We are going to stop at Kokomo to-night with 
Brother and Sister Roberts, and in the morning 
we shall go on home to Arcady. Home! How 
sweet the word sounds, John!” 

There had been a movement of freight cars in 
our vicinity for some minutes ; distant whistles 
of locomotives echoed around, and John had be- 
come restless. He rose stiffly, but eagerly. 
“Cynthy, I think it must be near time for our 
train; it would never do for us to miss this one, 
or we shouldn’t get home till to-morrow night. 
Let us go.” 

I left them on the car, with hope and expecta- 
tion in their faces, and said farewell as to old 
friends. “Come and see us in our home, my 
daughter,” was their last word. May the Lord 
bless you as he has blessed us, and good-bye!” 

As I waited yet a little for my train the bene- 
diction seemed to linger. The boats were com- 
ing gayly in to shore now; the western sun 
shone with a warm glow upon the distant prison 
windows ; school children laughed and shouted 
as if care and crime were not. Truly, the world 
had not all gone wrong. There was hope yet, 
and life was worth living after all. 


197 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


A year later, in the station at Indianapolis, I 
caught a glimpse of the two kind old faces once 
more. The eagerness had gone out of them; 
there was peace and resignation instead of hope. 
They looked out of a car that was westward 
bound. A farmer, standing at my elbow, told 
the story. 

“Father Ellis? Yes. Him and his wife is 
goin’ West, to jine their son ’at has a cattle 
ranch some’rs in Texas. One o’ these yer 
onlucky Methodis’ preachers, the old man is. 
Preached around on circuits in Indianny fer a 
matter o’ thirty or forty year. Married an’ had 
right smart o’ children, of course, as his perfes- 
sion allays does. How they managed to scratch 
along an’ raise them young-uns on the skimped 
wages Methodist preachers do get beats me. 
Seems ’sef people like them ort to be fed by the 
ravens, as Elisha was, or some sech way; or 
their meal-bar ’Is filled up, like the widder Cruse’s. 
How’ s’ ever, I s’ pose some way’s allays pervided. 
In this case the old man had got past his 
preachin’ days, an’ not a nickel saved fer old 
age, when old Mis Green, at Arcady, north o’ 
hyer, up an’ died, an’ left him her little jag o’ 


198 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


proputty. Not worth much, to be sure; but 
a right snug little home. 

“With this an’ what he’d get from the super- 
annuated fund, they was fixed to inch along com- 
fortable to the end o’ their days. But law! 
what does the old fellow do, when they hadn’t 
got more’n fairly settled, but go security fer 
Jim Jeffries, out Cicero road! Anybody with 
a grain o’ business sense ’ud a knowed it was 
flyin’ in the face o’ Providence, for Jeffries 
allays was slack an’ shif’less an’ ’twan’t noways 
likely’t he’d be able to meet them notes; an’ 
he didn’t nuther, an’ Father Ellis he hed to 
pay the debt, but it took all they was. So 
hyer they be, all tore up by the roots, so to 
speak. Doggoned pity, I say.” 

I went aboard the car to speak a word of 
greeting. The aisle was blocked by a small 
woman, with a large basket, and by a young 
miss who exchanged farewell giggles with a de- 
parting friend, interspersed with messages to their 
respective beaux. While I waited just behind 
them, the old wife’s voice reached me, soft and 
clear, amid all the confusion. I listened, and I 
turned away, sure that they needed no comfort 
I could offer. 


199 


AN ITINERANT PAIR 


‘‘The Lord has been very good to us, John. 
I can see now that my heart was set too much 
on worldly things, and it was best they should 
be taken away. The Lord doeth that which is 
good, John. He has left us each other.” 

“Yes, Cynthy, He has said: T am with 
thee and will keep thee in all places whither thou 
shalt go.’ We are old, my dear, and night will 
soon pass forever into the dawn of eternal day. 
May we enter together into the land that is no 
longer very far off. Let us pray, love, that 
death shall not part us; that, still together, 
when the morning is come, we may open our 
eyes in the Heavenly Kingdom, where a place 
is prepared for us.” 


200 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 

I T was Sunday forenoon, and Lodilla Jackson 
was engaged in “doing up” the morning’s 
work. She had washed the breakfast dishes, 
put the kitchen in order, made the beds, helped 
get her young brother and sister off to Sun- 
day-school and her mother started to church, 
and had got the dinner well under way. Lodil- 
la worked during the week in the establishment 
of a manufacturing chemist, or, as the place was 
otherwise known, a patent-medicine factory, 
where she pasted labels on bottles and pill-boxes, 
afterwards putting these articles in elaborately 
printed wrappers. Sunday was her “off” day, 
but she usually spent the first half of it in the 
manner described in order to relieve her mother, 
who was also a hard-working woman, as widows 
with children and little money are apt to be. 
She was twenty years old, and a good girl. 
Ever since she was fourteen she had been earn- 


201 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


ing money, and, with the help of her mother^ 
her brother two years younger, and, now, of a 
younger sister who answered to the call of 
“H-e-r-e, C-a-s-h,” in a dry goods shop, had 
almost succeeded in clearing their little house of 
the mortgage that encumbered it when her fa- 
ther died. Almost, but not quite. There was 
still necessity for frugality and self-denial, and 
little chance for indulgence in the vanities and 
luxuries in which girls delight. Nevertheless, 
Lodilla was not downcast or unhappy ; far from 
it. She looked forward confidently to the time 
when debt would cease to be a burden, and, 
meanwhile, planned a little for that happy day. 

This morning, while the corned beef and cab- 
bage boiled merrily on the stove and the molas- 
ses cake browned in the oven, she opened the 
parlor door, and, dust-cloth in hand, gazed med- 
itatively about that retreat. The room had been 
a source of great comfort to her mother and 
herself. Its possession seemed to them a visi- 
ble token of their respectable social standing. 
It was not every one of their neighbors on the 
quiet little South-side Indianapolis street who 
could afford a parlor. A good many of the 
people in their part of town lived in houses so 
202 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


small, or had families so large, that not a cor- 
ner of their establishments could be spared for 
company uses exclusively. Or, sometimes, 
when the extra room was there, the occupant of 
the house could not afford the necessary outlay 
for suitable furniture. 

The fittings for the Jackson parlor had been 
bought when the paternal Jackson was alive and 
in the enjoyment of health and good wages. 
The selection of this furniture had been the out- 
come of much thought, consultation and finan- 
cial calculation on the part of the two older mem- 
bers of the family, Lodilla at that time being of 
an age when her opinion on such matters was 
not influential. There, as the foundation of the 
outfit, was the ingrain carpet, with a green and 
black vine of most luxuriant growth meandering 
over its bright red ground. There, against the 
widest wall space, was a haircloth sofa, now 
worn to a gloss that rivaled the Russia-iron 
stove, and with a lumpiness of surface and weak- 
ness of springs unknown to it when new. The 
stove, an upright cylinder, decorated with much 
nickel-plating, was regarded when purchased as a 
great ornament to the room, and, although now 
adapted to the use of natural gas instead of the 
203 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


coal for which it was originally meant, was still 
held in much esteem in the household. There 
were several cane-seated chairs, a table which 
held a large glass lamp, and, on a shelf under- 
neath, the family Bible. The crowning glory of 
the room was the small cabinet organ in one cor- 
ner. Lodilla, at an early age, had learned to 
play ‘ ‘ by ear ’ ’ a few simple tunes and accompa- 
niments, and when the family and their visitors 
gathered there on Sunday afternoons and sang 
“ Shall We Gather at the River,” “ Hold the 
Fort,” “Whiter than Snow, “In the Sweet 
Bye and Bye,” and other “gospel hymns,” 
Mrs. Jackson, for one, felt that she enjoyed 
many blessings, while the pleasure felt by all in 
the music would certainly have been far less in- 
tense at a symphony concert. 

But it was not on any of these pieces of fur- 
niture that Lodilla was looking with some dis- 
content visible in her face ; it was upon the more 
decorative features of the apartment . Over the 
high wooden mantel hung a crayon portrait of 
her departed father, enlarged to a head of life 
size from a tintype of thumb-nail proportions by 
one of those mysterious processes practiced by 
peripatetic artisans. Her father had been gone 
204 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


too long for her to feel any deep personal senti- 
ment in regard to him, but the picture was in- 
vested with the interest of a sacred relic, and she 
had no thought of disturbing it. On the wall, 
over the sofa, hung that pair of chromos, “Wide 
Awake” and “Fast Asleep,” which, when, as 
newspaper prizes, they found places in a multi- 
tude of homes years ago, were so universally 
characterized as “perfectly lovely.” Lodilla 
was a trifle tired of these pictures, not because 
she detected any lack of artistic merit, but be- 
cause she did not think the chubby little girl 
portrayed in them a pretty child. Still, she 
did not at this time cherish any designs against 
them. 

Her eyes moved slowly along the row of pho- 
tographs of various sizes resting on the mantel, 
from there passed to the framed marriage certifi- 
cate of her parents hanging above the cabinet 
organ in a line with the framed certificates of 
baptism of herself and her brother and sister, 
then wandered from these to a large “memorial 
piece, ' ' framed in black and hanging in the place 
of honor between the windows, and rested there 
with especial dissatisfaction. This piece, which 
was printed in very black inks, with very deep 
205 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


shadows and very white high lights, represented 
a marble tombstone of dazzling whiteness, a 
willow tree and a kneeling widow, who had evi- 
dently come to weep, but had changed her mind 
and was looking up with ecstatic gaze at an 
angel with powerful wings bearing the astral 
body of the occupant of the grave up to a heaven 
beyond a flock of woolly clouds. Printed on 
scrolls in the corners were sundry comforting 
texts, and below, the full name of the deceased 
Jackson, engrossed in an ornamental, Spencerian 
hand. This remarkable work of art was kindly 
furnished to the widow for $2.75 — $1.25 off for 
an immediate sale — by the agent of an enter- 
prising engraving firm soon after her husband’s 
death. 

“I do wish, ma,” said Lodilla to her mother, 
who entered just then, “I do wish I had a pho- 
tograph album — one like Nell Abbott’s, a big 
plush-covered one. It would be so stylish on 
the table, and, besides, is so much better for 
keeping photographs than setting them around 
on things. And, ma — ” 

Here Lodilla hesitated and blushed a little. 

“Ma, Joe — Mr. Little — is getting his pictures 
taken — great big cabinets — and if he gives me 
206 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


one it would be nice to have a place to put it. 
He just admires Nell’s album; told her he 
thought every family ought to have one.” 

It will be observed that Lodilla, capable 
young woman that she was, was not quite up to 
date in this matter, but in her behalf it must be 
said that she had not had the advantage of asso- 
ciation with young society women, who claim to 
lead in fads and fashions of this sort, and who 
abandoned the album as a drawing-room orna- 
ment some time since. Her ideas as to the de- 
sirability of the article had been gathered from 
visits to the homes of her friends, who were still 
in the plush album and chromo stage of devel- 
opment. She had also gone with her mother on 
one occasion to carry a basket of mended cloth- 
ing to a bachelor apartment, where, in the com- 
mon sitting-room of the half dozen young men, 
the center-table held six large family albums 
arranged about the lamp, and presumably con- 
taining likenesses of the relatives, sweethearts 
and favorite actresses of the respective owners. 
Lodilla, who was much impressed with the lux- 
ury of other fittings of this room, felt that the 
albums were the crowning touch of elegance, 
and had longed for one ever since. She had 
207 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


particularly desired one since Joe Little, brake- 
man on the Big Four railroad, had loomed on 
her social horizon. She wanted his picture, and 
fancied that he would be the more willing to be- 
stow it if she had a suitable casket for the treas- 
ure. She was an unsophisticated girl, you see, 
unaware that no man needs encouragement to 
his vanity beyond the mere willingness on the 
part of a young woman to accept a likeness of 
himself. 

Mrs. Jackson, who, mother-like, would have 
been glad to gratify all her daughter’s tastes, 
looked a little troubled. 

“I don’t see, Dilly,” she said hesitatingly, 

‘ I don’t see how we can afford one now.” 

‘ ‘ Of course not, ma ; of course not, ’ ’ said 
Lodilla, with a sudden return to cheerfulness. 
“ I know we can’t afford it yet a while, and I’m 
not grumbling. Don’t you think it. I was just 
wishing and talking, and that don’t hurt, you 
know. But some day, ma, I’m going to have 
that album, and some day I’m going to buy 
some pictures and get you to put the memorial 
piece and the certificates in your bedroom. 
They’ve hung where they are so long I’d like a 


208 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


change, and the parlor needs a little freshening 
up and more style.” 

Her mother sighed a little, without looking at 
all sad. Her grief for the departed Jackson was 
so mitigated by time that the sighs brought by 
allusions to him were more from habit than 
emotion, and no longer indicated the least de- 
pression of spirits. 

“I always liked that memorial,” she said. 
” It’s so sort of satisfactory. That angel who’s 
carrying your pa is so big and strong that you 
can easy enough see how he can do it. He 
looks so substantial. The Widow Thomas, she 
has one where the angel’s just starting down af- 
ter Thomas — a little, thin, weakly angel you can 
see through, and you know the old man must 
have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds if he 
did one. Of course, we don’t suppose his spirit 
was heavy, but, somehow, there don’t seem to be 
a fitness in sending such a puny messenger after 
him. It seems a pity to put that memorial out of 
sight in the bedroom, but young folks must have 
their way, I reckon. You don’t think of taking 
the chromos down, do you?” she asked, anx- 
iously. ” Your pa gave them to me before we 
was married, and people come from all around 
14 209 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


to see them, and everybody said they were just 
the finest pictures that had ever been seen in 
Cherry Corners. Old Mr. Van Lew offered ten 
dollars for them, because Little Wide Awake 
looked so much like his grand-daughter, Lucy 
Ann Rodibaugh. But I wouldn’t a’ taken 
twice that then.” 

Dilly assured her mother that she had no in- 
tention of removing “ Wide Awake ” and “ Fast 
Asleep,” and hastened to look after her dinner. 

The cabbage which had boiled so long and 
steadily, was tender, the potatoes mealy, the 
corned beef just as it should be, the molasses 
cake light and sweet and delicious — just the 
cake that children remember all their lives as 
the kind mother used to make, a memory which 
causes them, when they are old, to wonder why 
no one else can ever make as good. 

And if you think the family gathered around 
that board and partaking of that frugal fare were 
not as happy as it is often given to people to be 
in this rather pleasant world, then you know lit- 
tle of the rewards of honest toil, of the delights 
of home provided, and its comforts earned and 
paid for by the efforts of all ; you have forgot- 
ten the eager appetite of healthy youth, which 
210 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


gives the plainest food a zest that a Lucullus 
feast could not offer now. And if you think 
Miss Lodilla, with her narrow life, her daily 
labor and her simple hopes and ambitions, was 
wasting time or energy in repinings at her lot, 
or fancied herself in any respect ill-used by fate, 
then you little understand the serene indepen- 
dence of the self-reliant, self-supporting Ameri- 
can girl, who, confident of her ability to provide 
for herself, envies no one. 

Lodilla, in her neat black skirt and shirt waist, 
in summer — oh, the ever-useful, universal shirt 
waist! — and her trim cloth jacket over the waist 
in winter, wended her way back and forth each 
day between home and factory, making one of 
the great army of working women, but having 
her own little plans and cares apart from such 
associations, and her maidenly dreams, just as 
other girls do with more time for dreams — just 
as all girls do while life is young and love is 
sweet. Joe Little, the big, fair-haired brake- 
man, figured a good deal in these meditations. 
He came to see her now and then, when he had 
no “run” to make, but it was always on a week- 
day evening. Sunday evenings he spent with 
Nellie Abbott, Lodilla’s dearest friend. That 


21 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


is, she had been her nearest and most confiden- 
tial friend, the girl to whom she had confided all 
her little secrets, but lately the intimacy had 
waned somewhat, and perhaps Joe Little had, 
unconsciously to himself, something to do with 
the coolness. These ardent friendships between 
girls are so apt to die a sudden death when an 
attractive young man comes on the scene. 

Joe Little had first met both the girls at a 
church strawberry festival, but had seemed to 
give preference to Nellie. The chief sign of his 
favor was the fact that his calls upon her were 
made on Sunday nights, and in their social circle 
this meant more serious intentions than an ordi- 
nary week-night visit. He was a musician of 
local repute, being known as a “boss fiddler,” 
and this accomplishment gave him welcome ad- 
mission to the best society of the neighborhood. 
Nellie, being something of a coquette, did not 
appear to care especially for him, and, for that 
matter, neither did Lodilla — she was too fully a 
woman for that — but she did care, and was learn- 
ing to think about him more and more. 

“I really don’t think Nell’s prettier than I 
am,” she would say to herself, looking anxiously 
in the glass. “Nell’s got a real good complex- 
212 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


ion, lots better than mine, but her nose is pug 
and her eyes are squinty. They are; she can’t 
deny it, and they do say cross-eyed people get 
to have bad tempers, even if they don’t begin 
with them. Nell’s awful peppery sometimes 
now when things don’t go her way. It can’t 
be her looks; it must be other things. She’s 
got a piano and can play the ‘Maiden’s Prayer,’ 
‘The Brook,’ ‘The Gussie Waltz’ and a lot of 
pieces, and he likes music so. And she’s got 
a photograph album, and, oh dear!’ 

You people who accept the assurances of 
novelists and cheap critics that women with the 
smallest claims to comeliness — and where is she 
who has none? — are satisfied with themselves, 
and unable to recognize the charms of their 
rivals — you merely show your ignorance. The 
normal girl is distinctly aware of her own de- 
fects, and as keenly conscious of the other girl’s 
especial attractions. She recognizes, with a 
pang at her heart, the captivating effect of the 
little curl on her rival’s white neck, the dimple 
in her chin, of the long lashes, under which she 
glances so bewitchingly. She may honestly 
wonder why the man in the case is so stupid 
and blind as not to detect that other girl’s faults 
213 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


of character which are so clear to her, but she 
never undervalues the outward allurements. 

Strawberry time and its festivals were now 
long past, and early winter was here, but Joe 
Little showed no signs of change in his fancy 
for Nellie Abbott, except that his calls at the 
Widow Jackson’s were rather less frequent then 
they had been. Lodilla began to have little 
heartaches, and if she cried when her sister was 
asleep and she could smother her sobs in the 
pillow, it would not be at all surprising. But 
if anybody guessed her sadness and its cause it 
was only her mother, and mothers never betray 
such secrets. 

She worked as industriously as ever over her 
bottles and pill-boxes, chattered as gayly with 
her companions as usual, and loitered before the 
shop windows during the noon hour with the 
natural and wholesome curiosity of a healthy 
young woman. Love, of the lurid, all-absorb- 
ing kind we read about, that takes the appe- 
tite, banishes sleep and destroys other interests 
of life, is less frequent than the variety which 
permits other sentiments to exist simultaneously 
and allows the sufferer intervals of comparative 
comfort and cheer. 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


One evening Mr. Little dropped in unexpect- 
edly and brought his fiddle — he did not call it a 
violin. He did not tell Lodilla that he had in- 
tended to go to Nellie’s, but from across the 
street had chanced to see William Marvin, 
freight conductor on his road, enter before him 
and receive a warm greeting from the young 
lady. He “never could abide Bill Marvin, ’ ’ and 
wouldn’t spend an hour in the same room if he 
could help it. 

Lodilla made herself particularly agreeable 
that evening. She begged him to play for her, 
and he did play the “Wrecker’s Daughter,’’ 
“Fisher’s Hornpipe,’’ “Drunkard’s Heecups’’ 
— a tune in which the plunking of the strings gives 
the realistic effect of hiccoughs — the “Arkansaw 
Traveler’’ and a Strauss Waltz. At least these 
are what he told her they were, and she thanked 
him and praised him and said she loved the fid- 
dle, and could never grow tired of it; and then 
she sang all her songs to the cabinet organ ac- 
companiment with its undertone of wheezy 
groans, suggestive of misery in its inside, and 
never before had she put such feeling and earn- 
estness into tunes or words. And, after the 
visitor had been served with doughnuts and 

215 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


a big glass of unfermented grape juice that ma 
put up herself, he went home, well pleased with 
himself and all the world, Lodilla included. She 
was happy, but not confident. She had still an 
oppressive fear of her rival. 

The very next day she was drawn by irresist- 
ible attraction into a crowd in front of a big 
Washington street shoe-shop, and stood there 
with fascinated eyes watching a man in the win- 
dow who painted a beautiful landscape while 
you waited. There he stood, painting clouds, 
trees, rivers and river banks, grassy knolls, mos- 
sy dells and gray rocks with lightning swiftness 
— laying on one color and then another, and 
bringing out marvelous effects before you fairly 
knew what he had intended. 

A yellow circular thrust into her hand by a 
boy informed her that she could have one of 
these works of art free of cost if she would pur- 
chase a pair of shoes in the shop — the frame 
only being charged for. 

A sudden ambition filled her mind. She had 
the money in her pocket for a pair of shoes and 
meant to buy them that very afternoon. Why 
not purchase them here instead of at the little 
shop on the side street, which she had always 
216 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


patronized? They might cost a little more 
here, but then, just for once, and with this prize 
in view, she might surely venture the additional 
outlay. The frame was extra, but she would 
take a ninety-eight-cent one and save the 
amount after awhile out of the price of her win- 
ter gown. Without giving herself time to re- 
consider, she bought the shoes, selected the 
picture she had seen painted, or one precisely 
like it, and went her way, feeling the fearful joy 
of a wish gratified at the cost of wild extrava- 
gance. 

The purchase created a sensation at home, 
and though the careful mother shook her head 
doubtfully over the investment of so much mon- 
ey for purely decorative purposes, she did not 
remonstrate, but joined with the rest of the fam- 
ily in admiring the new possession. 

“You see, ma,” said Lodilla, with intent to 
justify herself, “you see, hand-painted pictures 
are the thing now-days; everybody says so, and 
they cost like everything. Nell says her un- 
cle’s sister-in-law in Chicago paid twenty- 
five dollars for a painting not more than ten 
inches across, and Joe Little, he told me about 
a five-hundred-dollar picture he’d seen a man 
21 7 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


carrying home on the train one day, and there 
wasn’t a thing to it but two or three sheep and 
a dog on a side-hill. And just think! This 
didn’t cost a cent without the frame.” 

The next day was Sunday, and frequent were 
Lodilla’s visits to the parlor to look at her treas- 
ure hanging in state between the windows, in 
place of the memorial piece, now retired to the 
privacy of ma’s bedroom. That night who 
should come but Joe Little to ask her to go to 
church. She accepted the invitation with se- 
date dignity, but with secret joy. Sunday 
night! That meant so much. 

Nellie Abbott was there with the freight con- 
ductor, whom Lodilla mentally classified at once 
as “perfectly horrid,” and was instantly con- 
vinced that her old friend was consumed with 
envy of her superior good fortune in securing 
the handsome and altogether more desirable es- 
cort. Filled with which thought, she smiled 
with great sweetness on Miss Nellie. 

After services were over Joe came in with 
intent to sit by the sheet-iron cylinder and enjoy 
an hour of social converse. Lodilla wished her 
new art acquisition to dawn upon him unan- 
nounced, and sat in tremulous expectation of his 
218 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


verdict. Finally, after talk about the weather, 
ma’s cold, the new choir and various neighbor- 
hood topics had begun to languish, Mr. Little’s 
glance chanced to fall upon the picture. He 
rose slowly and stood before it, inspecting it 
closely with a critical eye ; then he made a tele- 
scope of his hands and viewed it from a more 
distant standpoint. Then he said impressively: 

“Lodilla, that’s a mighty good thing; it’s got 
good points. You don’t want to stand too close 
to one of them hand-painted oil pictures, they’re 
apt to blur, but just get off a piece and they 
come right out. That lightning artist’s a dandy. 
Shows what a painter man can do who puts his 
mind to it and isn’t afraid to work. It must make 
those fellows who potter over one picture for 
weeks just sick to see him dash them things off 
at such a rate. I tell you, Lodilla,” he added 
with animation, after a pause and further inspec- 
tion, “it looks like a place on the old farm down 
home. I’ve set on that rock, or one like it, and 
fished for bass in just such a hole many of a 
time.” 

Then, as if with inspiration of the instant; 
“And say, Lodilla” — here he faltered and his 
voice grew soft — “say, don’t you want to marry 
219 


A MOVEMENT IN ART 


me some day and go down there and visit the 
home place and the old folks?” 

It was sudden, but she was equal to the emer- 
gency. His arm was around her, and her answer 
was whispered on his shoulder, but not so low 
that he could not hear. 

When Christmas came, a few weeks later, he 
gave her a big red plush album with gilt trim- 
mings and a little mirror set in the corner, and 
she felt that her cup of bliss was full. 

The album was a treasure, but Lodilla will 
value that picture between the windows till the 
end of her days. It brought her love and Joe. 
Art education is not always a rapid process. Her 
children may learn to appreciate picture posters 
and know what Beardsleyism means, but she will 
be forever satisfied with her landscape painted in 
nine minutes as her mother before her was with 
the chromos. 


220 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 



RELIGIOUS revival had been in progress 


i \ in the churches of Greenbrier, Indiana, for 
six weeks — that is, in the Methodist, the Bap- 
tist and the Presbyterian churches. The Roman 
Catholics went on calmly with only their usual 
services, and were regarded with more than the 
ordinary measure of pity by their Protestant 
neighbors as persons who had never been prop- 
erly converted, and were little better than be- 
nighted heathen. Episcopalians, too, continued 
in the even tenor of their way, and had their 
customary dancing and card parties, which were 
frowned on with greater sternness than ever by 
the rigid Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist 
brethren who had not yet reached the tolerant 
stage in relation to these amusements attained 
by members of their denominations in larger 
cities. Even the young people of these churches 
who had been wont to think longingly of the 


221 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


forbidden entertainments, and sometimes to par- 
ticipate in them surreptitiously, now looked 
askance at the frivolous givers of the parties and 
promised themselves that by the help of the 
Lord they would never be led into such evil do- 
ings again, for these young people were among 
the fruits of the revival, and had bidden farewell 
to sin. 

Such a wonderful ingathering of souls had 
not been known before in the history of Green- 
brier. The revival movement began simultane- 
ously in the three churches, and almost from the 
beginning a wave of religious emotion manifest- 
ed itself. Young and old were affected by it; 
innocent children and case-hardened sinners suc- 
cumbed, the first unresistingly, the second reluc- 
tantly, to its power. Every night the churches 
were crowded and every night penitents seeking 
salvation rose for prayers, or went forward and 
knelt at the altar as the custom of the respective 
sects required. Every night numbers of these 
penitents declared that they had found what they 
sought, that they had shaken off the bonds of 
iniquity and had entered upon a new life. Back- 
sliders returned and renewed their faith. The 
interest was intense. A subdued excitement 


222 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


was in the air and affected the transaction of 
business and household affairs throughout the 
town. People hurried through their evening 
meals in order that they might miss no feature 
of the coming services. Now, after six weeks, 
though there was no falling off in attendance, it 
began to be said that the meetings would soon 
close. As one pious but practical elder put it, 
the harvest was gathered, and why go raking 
over the ground? A few sinners remained un- 
converted, it was true, but they were seemingly 
hopeless and must be left to the Lord’s mercy. 

On this Friday night of the sixth week as 
many people as ever hastened along the streets 
to the places of meeting and the Methodist 
Church, at least, quickly filled with a congre- 
gation as large as at any time during the re- 
vival season. People had come to depend on 
the excitement and dreaded a termination of it. 
In their narrow village life the meetings took 
the place of drama and opera and social gaye- 
ties, with the addition of a personal and emo- 
tional element that such entertainments lack, 
and that held them through night after night of 
prayer and exhortion without wearying. A 


223 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


thorough-going revival in a town of this kind 
has uses not contemplated by its promoters 
Among the later arrivals was a group of 
young girls who entered a pew not far from the 
door. There was a little crowding and confus- 
ion as they passed in, and if Althea Hood, the 
youngest member of the party, had been ob- 
servant of her companions she would have 
seen that their purpose was to give her a seat 
next the aisle. She saw nothing and sat con- 
tentedly enough, her thoughts absorbed in the 
scene about her. Althea was not yet sixteen ; un- 
til these meetings opened she had never attended 
a religious gathering more exciting than the 
Sunday morning services in the Episcopal 
church where she went with her parents, and 
the regular weekly Presbyterian prayer-meeting 
to which she had gone with an elderly neighbor 
on several occasions. Her parents, easy-going 
and indulgent, after the American fashion, had 
allowed their young daughter to take her own 
way, and when she showed herself disinclined 
to confirmation ceremonies had not insisted, 
saying to each other it was better that she 
should choose the bonds she would wear when 
she was old enough to know her duty to God 
224 


THE QJJICKENING OF A SOUL 


and her fellow-creatures. So far were they out 
of sympathy with revival methods that, perhaps, 
it did not occur to them that their self-contained, 
unemotional child was likely to be affected by 
them, and, indeed, she had shown no signs of 
being so. 

One by one her school associates had suc- 
cumbed to the pleadings of the pastors, evange- 
lists or other workers in the vineyard, had passed 
through a period of penitence and grief, and had 
finally declared, in more or less childlike and in- 
coherent phrase, that they felt the burden of 
sin lifted from their souls and an assurance that 
they were saved by divine grace. Henceforth 
they would turn their backs upon the tempta- 
tions of this world and would love God and 
praise Him for the rest of their days. So many 
of these school-mates had professed conversion 
that at last Althea was the only one of her circle 
who remained unmoved by the appeals that had 
so affected the others. She took a deep inter- 
est in all the proceedings, but seemed to make 
no personal application of the exhortations. She 
watched her companions curiously. That a 
change of some sort had passed over them was 
plain. It manifested itself in an increased se- 
i5 22 5 


TIIE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


dateness of behavior; she was aware, too, in the 
presence of certain ones, of a pitying condescen- 
sion, as if she were no longer on an equality with 
with them. Others — two or three — went about 
with a rapt and radiant air as if, indeed, they 
had entered upon a new life, and with glorified 
vision looked out upon a more spiritual world 
than the unregenerate saw. These she observed 
somewhat wistfully, but it was at no time borne 
in upon her that she, too, could share their joy. 

She was not self-conscious ; had she been so 
she would have become aware on this Friday 
night that unusual attention was directed her 
way. Long after, she learned that she had been 
regarded by the elder brethren and sisters as a 
“ soul ” whose conversion was, for various rea- 
sons, much to be desired, and that a determined 
and concerted effort to break her hitherto un- 
moved calm was prearranged for that evening. 

All these meetings were informal. Some one 
began to sing, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul," and 
the congregation joined in with more than com- 
mon fervor. It was the old-time tune even 
more touching than the words. Althea added 
her clear young voice to the rest as she had done 
before : 


226 


THE QJJICKENING OF A SOUL 


“All my trust on Thee is stayed, 

All my help from Thee I bring; 

Cover my defenseless head 

With the shadow of Thy wing.” 

As the verse came to an end an elderly sister, 
passing by, touched Althea softly on the shoul- 
der and whispered : 

“You should come, dear, and give yourself 
to Jesus so you could sing that with your 
heart.’ ’ 

An aged brother lifted up his quavering voice 
in prayer. He was illiterate, but it is piety and 
not erudition, we must believe, which counts with 
the Maker of men. 

“Oh, Lord,” he prayed, “Oh, Lord, there 
ain’t but a few sinners left in this yer congrega- 
tion, an’ ef you’ll jest pour out the speret upon 
us to-night, jest pour it out free, we’ll fetch ’em 
in. They cain’t stand out agin that power ; they’ll 
realize thet they’re pore an’ needy. Bless us, 
Lord, bless us right now!” 

Then came the pleading hymn : 

“ Come ye sinners, poor and needy, 

Weak and wounded, sick and sore ; 

Jesus ready stands to save you, 

Full of pity, love and power ; 

He is able, He is able, 

He is willing, doubt no more.” 

22 7 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


The exhortations of the old pastor, commonly 
so fatherly and gentle, had an almost youthful 
fire that night. He preached the wrath of God 
as he had not done in all the weeks. The guilt 
of the one withholding complete submission was 
pictured in the darkest colors. Repentance for 
sin, acceptance of atoning grace, love for the 
Son, were the only means of averting this wrath. 
Neither gifts nor praise, neither good works nor 
clean living, could avail if the doer of righteous 
things walked not humbly by faith in God. De- 
lay meant death. Let the young yield up their 
hearts now, or else risk the loss of life eternal. 

After him came a young evangelist who was 
becoming noted for his success as an “awaken- 
er.” He was a thin-faced, long-necked young 
man, spoken of by admiring women as ascetic 
and spiritual. Discriminating observers would 
have been apt to class him as dyspeptic and his 
eloquence as sounding brass; nevertheless, with 
his peculiarly musical voice and pleading man- 
ner he won attention where others failed. Al- 
thea Hood had dreamed dreams about this 
young man. If she had understood the secrets 
of her own foolish little child-heart she would 
have been aware that his presence was one of 
228 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


the attractions that had made her attendance so 
constant at the meetings. She was not in love 
with him — the sentiment had no such strength 
as that. She was simply experiencing the first 
faint flutterings of femininity roused to life by 
masculine influence. 

The evangelist clasped his hands before him 
in the praying-Samuel position, and tossing 
back his long mane began to plead with those 
lambs which had wandered away from the Shep- 
herd’s loving arms. He said nothing of sin or 
of guilt, repentence or forgiveness. He only 
called upon the wanderers to come where love, 
and shelter, and tender care awaited them. He 
quoted beautiful poetic passages from the Bible 
and comforting promises; he talked of green 
pastures and still waters, of light, and life, and 
love, but love was chiefly his theme. It was 
divine love, of course, but the speaker’s voice 
was soft and low; his eyes were directed toward 
Althea, and she, poor child, thrilled at his tones 
and only half comprehended his words. In con- 
clusion he held out his hands entreatingly and 
sang: 

“ Love divine, all loves excelling, 

Joy of heaven to earth come down ; 

Fix in us thy humble dwelling, 

All thy faithful mercies crown.” 

229 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


These little tenor solos, interspersed through 
his talks, were distinctive features of his methods 
and were considered especially effective. The 
revival spirit was fully aroused now. Song and 
prayer quickly succeeded each other. Ejacula- 
tions of praise and murmurs of ecstatic feeling 
were heard from all parts of the room in antiphonal 
likeness. Brethren and sisters, gifted as plead- 
ers, or led by sense of duty to exercise their in- 
fluence, moved among the congregation, seeking 
out the few who, as the accepted phrase was, 
had not yet “confessed Christ.” One after an- 
other besought Althea to yield up her heart. 
Tears fell from the eyes of the old pastor as he 
urged her to go forward to the “mourners’ 
bench” and take what might be her last chance 
for salvation. 

They were singing fervently just then : 

“ Alas, and did my Savior bleed, 

And did my Sovereign die ? 

Would He devote that sacred head 
For such a worm as I ?” 

“But I am not a vile sinner,” she protested. 
“I am not a worm,” and would not go. 

Her school-mates who had so lately read their 
own titles clear added their petitions ; her teacher 
230 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


urged upon her the duty of subduing her pride 
and indifference ; women and men for whom she 
had the greatest respect, came to her and 
pointed out the strait and narrow path. They 
left her still unmoved so far as outward in- 
dications showed. The young evangelist ap- 
proached. Her lips set together firmly; her 
hands, already moving nervously, clenched them- 
selves; the strain was becoming great, but, “I 
will not go,” she whispered to herself. He 
reached out his hand. “Come, little sister,” he 
said. “Come; the Good Shepherd wants this 
lamb that is outside the fold. Come.” And 
she arose and followed him. 

In front of the pulpit was a long bench at 
which already were two penitents — an old man 
who was converted at every revival and as regu- 
larly became a backslider when the excitement 
subsided, and a young man who was commonly 
spoken of in the community as a “hard case.” 
She knelt beside them mechanically. 

The congregation was singing with great vol- 
ume of sound, “There’s a Land That Is Fairer 
Than Day.” The young evangelist turned and 
lifted his hand. There was silence, and with 
hands clasped and eyes uplifted he sang “The 
231 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


Ninety and Nine.” It was like a solo by a fa- 
mous tenor in an opera — a feature of the even- 
ing that women, at least, would not have missed 
for the world. He sang it through, and when 
he reached the last triumphant strain excitement 
was at hysterical height : 

“But all through the mountains thunder-riven, 

And up from the rocky steep, 

There rose a cry to the gate of heaven, 

‘Rejoice ! I have found my sheep ! ’ 

And the angels echoed around the throne, 

‘Rejoice ! for the Lord brings back His own !’ ” 

There was a chorus of amens . ‘ ‘ Bless the Lord ! ’ * 
shouted one brother; “ Praise His name! ” ex- 
claimed another. There were groans and inar- 
ticulate cries. A woman uttered a piercing 
shriek, and falling prone upon the floor in the 
aisle, lay there like a log. No one heeded her; 
she had the * ‘ power * ’ and would come to her- 
self in good time. Breathing was short and 
quick; faces were flushed; women and girls 
wept silently, or with hysterical sobs, as their 
temperaments constrained them ; there was a 
rhythmical swaying of bodies ; some one prayed 
loudly but no one heard ; the amens, the groans, 
and the bless-God’s were still louder. Althea, half 
232 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


terrified by the tempest of emotion about her, her 
self-control broken at last, sobbed convulsively. 

A mother in Israel knelt beside her and en- 
treated her to open her heart and let love and 
forgiveness come in. The old man at the 
mourners’ bench rose with a joyful shout and 
announced that he felt to rejoice that he had 
once more been anointed with the oil of gladness 
and had obtained forgiveness for his sins. 

“Come let us anew our journey pursue” be- 
gan a voice near by, and the congregation took 
up the strain. 

The young man, who was a hard case, rose 
and stammeringly declared that he had given 
his heart to God and hoped, by His help, to 
live a Christian life from that time on. 

As suddenly as Althea’s tears had begun they 
ceased and her excitement was over. She rose 
to her feet just as her favorite hymn was being 
sung — favorite, because of the pathetic minor 
cadences, not the words whose sentiment was 
beyond her experience yet. Unconscious as a 
bird, she joined in : 

“Just as I am, without one plea, 

But that Thy blood was shed for me, 

And that Thou bidst me come to Thee, 

O Lamb of God! I come.” 

233 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


The brethren and sisters near the front pressed 
around her with congratulations. The pastor 
took her hand and patted it, his face beaming. 

“My daughter, I knew there was a blessing 
for you if you would take it. Add your word 
of testimony now.” 

“But I did not mean,” she said with startled 
emphasis. “I am not — I have not had a bless- 
ing.” 

They saw her lips move, but no one listened 
to her words, and the song drowned them : 

“Hallelujah ’tis done! I believe on the Son, 

I am saved by the blood of the crucified One!” 

Following this triumphant outburst came the 
joyful hymn : 

“ How happy are they 
Who their Savior obey, 

And have laid up their treasures above! 
Tongue can not express 
The sweet comfort and peace 
Of a soul in its earliest love ! ” 

She was counted among the converts. The 
pastor thanked God for her in his prayer, and 
was a shade less enthusiastic in thanks for the 
rescue of the backslider and the hard case. 

Althea did not join in the singing of the dox- 
234 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

ology. All at once a meaning seemed to come 
into the words which hardly had a meaning to 
her before. 

“ Praise God from whom all blessings flow !” 

Could she really praise God? Praise Him for 
what? 

As she passed slowly down the crowded aisle 
hands were stretched from every side to grasp 
hers in the kindly Methodist fashion ; many a 
blessing was invoked upon her by the older 
brethren and sisters; younger friends said they 
were glad she had become one of them. She 
only smiled faintly and was silent. Silence 
seemed cowardly, but how could she tell them 
that it was not true, that she had experienced 
no change of heart, that she was the same in 
every way that she had been the day before? 
Or could it be, and she grasped at the thought, 
could it be that a change had come and she did 
not know it? She had been excited, had wept 
and then become calm like all her newly con- 
verted friends. Then her eyes fell upon the 
hard case as he met his mother — an old woman 
with care-worn, tear-stained face, transfigured, 
now, with joy. His reckless, defiant expression 
235 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


had given way to a look of — what was it? — de- 
termination, gladness, high endeavor? She felt 
that he had attained something she had not and 
her hopeful thought for herself vanished. 

Pressed by the crowd into the angle of a door- 
way she heard the young evangelist say in con- 
fidential tone to a leading member: “In this 
business you have to make a study of people. 
Different methods must be worked on old and 
young men, old women and young ones. Not 
many ’ll hold out if you go at ’em in the right 
way. I felt sure I’d fetch the Hood girl. You 
know they say I have a taking way with the la- 
dies,” and he laughed foolishly. 

“I’m powerful glad ye fetched her, it makes 
the even one hundred and fifty — I don’t count 
the other two who went for’ard to-night, they 
won’t stick — and one hundred and fifty is a 
mighty good showing in a town like this; they’ll 
build up the church amazing. Besides, her 
father, Colonel Hood, ’ll be madder’n a hornet. 
He don’t b’lieve in religious revivals. He’s 
’Piscopal.” 

The old man chuckled in an ungodly way. 
Althea, hurrying by, felt, with the changing im- 
pulse of youth, that she hated them both, and, 
236 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


with mist of romance suddenly and cruelly 
cleared, she saw the evangelist as a lean, lank, 
commonplace, self-conceited youth, and an inno- 
cent, girlish ideal of manliness was forever gone. 

It was not a happy frame of mind for a new 
convert. 

A few months after the revival, which re- 
mains famous in the annals of Greenbrier, life 
began for Althea Hood. This first experience 
of life grew out of acquaintance with death. 
The destroyer came suddenly to her father, not 
yet an old man. Under the shock the mother 
drooped and soon followed her husband. 

Althea, with the bewilderment which comes 
to the young who encounter the great mystery, 
mourned and suffered as only the young do — 
without the philosophy, the resignation, some- 
times the peace and hope that bereavement 
brings to age. Pious friends talked to her of 
the duty of submission — she was still rebellious ; 
of God’s love — she did not know their meaning. 
The experience of the revival had left her with- 
out religious feeling; it was as if her heart, 
which might have unfolded as naturally to spirit- 
ual truth as a rose opens under sun and dew, 
237 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

had ceased to grow, like a bud when torn apart 
by rough hands. 

Life was not easy. Poverty was her portion, 
and a home with uncongenial relatives until 
school days were past and she became a teacher 
among new scenes and new people in the 
capital of the state. 

There are teachers who profess to love their 
calling for its own sake. Being truthful in 
other matters they must be believed in this. 
Althea Hood was not one of these. She found 
teaching irksome, and when David Phillips asked 
her to marry him she promptly said yes, and 
gladly gave up her work. 

Althea loved her husband with as deep an 
affection as she was capable of entertaining at 
her stage of development. 

In occasional moments of introspection Althea 
realized that she did not have that absorbing, 
overwhelming affection for him that novelists’ 
heroines entertain for their chosen lovers, but 
satisfied herself with the theory that such ardent 
emotions did not belong to real life. 

David Phillips was a prosperous, energetic 
business man several years older than she — a 
quiet, self-contained person who smiled indul- 
238 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

gently over his young wife’s aesthetic tastes, her 
fondness for poetry and romance, her little out- 
bursts of sentiment, her feminine ways in gen- 
eral. If he did not seem to sympathize he, at 
least, did not antagonize, and she was fairly con- 
tent in her little daily round. There were the 
housekeeping and social duties, the music, the 
reading, the various odds and ends that fill the 
time of the woman who has no ambitions out- 
side her home, no consciousness of work to be 
done there — these made up her routine. There 
were no ecstacies, no deep emotions ; it was a 
narrow life, and yet a day came when she looked 
back to this period of peace as one of enviable 
bliss. There are but few heights of joy in any 
life, and, in most, many depths of grief, so it 
may be that the dead level of calm content, the 
absence of emotion, is the happiness to be 
chosen — if choice were in human power. 

Althea attended church during this time. It 
was respectable to do so ; it had been her early 
habit, and, besides, the beauty of the Epis- 
copal ritual pleased her. She could join in 
the prayer, “Have mercy upon us miserable 
sinners,” with an intellectual pleasure in the 
sonorousness of the response, but with as little 
239 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

understanding of heart as when the brethren at 
the revival besought her to seek forgiveness for 
sin. But though she did not comprehend, some- 
times she wondered if all those who joined in the 
prayers were as unmoved as she, and, if not, what 
secret they possessed that she did not. 

Then, one happy day, a new interest entered 
into her life. Her baby came and her soul 
began to grow. It is not always so, though it 
is the fashion to talk of mothers as gifted with 
a world of new spiritual and moral graces. To 
those who look on, it too often seems that moth- 
erhood means a narrowing of vision and an in- 
tensity of selfishness. But Althea’s horizon 
widened. With her own child in her arms she 
looked out upon a new world. Her eyes were 
suddenly opened to the needs of other little ones. 
A vast pity filled her heart for the waifs, the 
hapless creatures who are born to poverty and 
know suffering almost with their first breath. 
“The cry of the children” appealed to her as it 
had never done before. Her eyes once open, it 
was strange what vistas of both joy and sorrow 
spread before them ; she questioned why she 
had not seen these things before. 

Her little son waxed fat and fair. He was 


240 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


the delight of her days ; waking and sleeping he 
was in her dreams. She rejoiced in his infantile 
graces, but her thoughts ran on and on and pic- 
tured him as he should be as time went by — the 
sturdy lad loved by his playmates, the youth 
excelling his companions in all noble undertak- 
ings, the strong, proud man honored by the 
world, but through all the changes her own dear 
son, still loving and true. 

Her husband looked on, pleased at the sight 
of the maternal joy, the look a little wistful at 
times, perhaps, because the wife was so lost in 
the mother that he seemed half forgotten and 
quite unessential to her happiness. 

Then one terrible day the baby died, the lit- 
tle child who had lacked no care that love could 
give. Out of the mother’s arms they took the 
fair dimpled body for the last time ; they folded 
the rose-leaf hands that would flutter upon her 
bosom no more; they took him away, the life 
of her life, and laid him under the flowers. 

Is there agony for any human creature greater 
than that of the mother bereaved? 

She mourned in bitterness and without hope. 
Between her and the “land that is fairer than 
day,” the land of which she once sang so un- 

16 241 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


thinkingly, rose a wall through which came no 
answer to her resentful cries . In her wretchedness 
she turned against her husband. She fancied 
that he was not sympathetic, that he really 
missed their child but little. She brooded over 
this imaginary trouble in addition to the genuine 
woe and brought herself into such a state of an- 
tagonism that nothing he could do pleased her, 
and she withdrew her companionship from him 
to a degree that left him bewildered and help- 
less. He ascribed her irritability and coldness 
to her recent bereavement. It was really one 
of those critical situations that occur in most 
married lives before the art of living together in 
harmony has been mastered. The little rift may 
close itself or become a chasm never to be bridged. 

David recommended change of scene. Would 
she go south and get the early spring breezes? 
Would she come with him on a trip to New 
York which business compelled him to take? 
Would she go anywhere her fancy preferred and 
win back health to mind and nerves? These 
were questions he asked her, but to all she cold- 
ly answered “no.” She “wished to be alone,” 
she said, and he left her reluctantly. 


242 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


Scarcely had he started on his journey when 
a thing happened the like of which has been 
known to occur among people we hear of; 
people of whom our friends know and, whisper- 
ing, tell the tale. A woman called to see Al- 
thea — a woman who had possibly been comely 
at one time in her life but was no longer, a 
creature unprepossessing enough now. With her 
was a child two or three years old. It was not 
a pleasant story she told, but she told it in a 
way convincing to her hearer. She was the 
woman, she said, who should have been David 
Phillips’s wife ; the child was hers and his, but he 
had cast them both off. They were in want; 
would Mrs. Phillips help them? 

She gave the woman money and sent her 
away in haste, telling her never to return, and 
that she did not believe her story; but she 
never doubted its truth for a moment. Would 
a woman, even a lost creature, advertise her 
shame needlessly? She had never dreamed that 
her husband, David Phillips, had ever been 
other than upright and honorable, and had heard 
and thought but little in her life about evil of 
this sort. But she had seen that David was 
changed ; he was growing more quiet and reti- 
243 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

cent every day. Perhaps he was losing his love 
for her, and he had not seemed to care when 
the baby died. Her little son! And he was 
the father of her son. 

A whirlwind of rage swept over her at the 
thought that he had covered the memory of this 
lost darling with shame, that he had brought 
humiliation upon her. How could she go on 
and live in the same world with him and with — 
those others. A wild impulse to take herself 
out of it came to her ; a vision of the river, deep 
and dark, rose temptingly. 

Her wrath turned against the man who had 
deceived her. At times she longed for him to 
be there that she might face him with her knowl- 
edge of his iniquity; then, with revulsion of feel- 
ing, rejoiced at his absence. No one seeing her 
then could charge her with being unemotional. 
Vindictive passion stirred her one hour, shame 
weighed her down the next, then followed a 
wave of grief for the vanished days of peace. 
Life was not the joyous thing it had seemed in 
the old Greenbrier days ; now, she knew that it 
meant tears, and heartache, and sorrows worse 
than death. She wrote brief notes in reply to 
her husband’s letters. Why she postponed 
244 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


writing him that their lives could not go on to- 
gether she hardly knew, since she had deter- 
mined to send such a letter. One day she be- 
gan the task. Before she had finished illumina- 
tion came. She knew suddenly that she loved 
the man she was preparing to put out of her life 
— loved him in spite of his sins, of his wrong to 
herself, loved him with an intensity she had not 
dreamed of when she married him. It was not 
the love she had read of and had not thought to 
experience, it was a thousand times stronger. 
She did not want it so; she resented the truth 
and would have denied it to herself but could 
not. 

For days she fought with her impulses, and 
then resisted them no longer. She was too 
frank and transparent to dream of concealing her 
knowledge of the wretched secret, and, besides, 
she had conceived a plan whose carrying out 
involved mutual explanation and consultations. 

With trembling haste, now that she had re- 
solved upon a course, she wrote the letter tell- 
ing him her story of the woman and child, of 
her grief and resentment, and, finally, of her 
love and willingness to forgive and receive him 
back. Then she added — it was the crowning bit 

245 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

of self-sacrifice — “I want to provide for the 
child; if you like, I will find it and bring it 
home.” 

She sent the letter and waited. With all her 
spirit of forgiveness and her impatience for his 
return she was not unmindful of the fact that she 
was doing an unusual thing, one he would have 
no right to expect, a truly Christian act. In- 
deed, the spirit of condescension, of goodness 
stooping to the sinner, was manifest in the let- 
ter. 

She did not know where the woman and child 
might be found, but spent those days of waiting 
in wandering about a quarter of the city she had 
known but little of, thinking that by chance she 
might find them. Once she caught a glimpse 
of the woman in a passing street car — a hard- 
faced creature in tawdry garb she looked in the 
pitiless sunlight. 

Hurrying home, a little belated, one evening, 
she was driven by a sudden spring shower to 
the nearest shelter, which chanced to be a dilap- 
idated warehouse, hardly more than a shed, 
from whose open door the sound of singing is- 
sued. By the dim and flickering light of a few 
lanterns hung about she saw a motley company 
246 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


seated on improvised benches, or standing next 
the wall. There were men who looked like 
tramps and others, better clothed, who might 
be worse. There were women who might be 
honest mothers of families, others who as surely 
were not. Unwholesome looking children of 
various ages looked curiously on. 

But one voice was heard ; evidently the crowd 
was not familiar with the words of the song. The 
man standing by an upturned box with a cheap 
glass lamp upon it was the singer. “There Is a 
Fountain Filled With Blood,” was the hymn; 
he sang one stanza through alone. As he be- 
gan the second a woman joined in in a thin, un- 
certain soprano : 

“The dying thief rejoiced to see 
That fountain in his day; 

And there may I, though vile as he, 

Wash all my sins away, 

Wash all my sins away.” 

With the third verse the woman stopped and 
sat down, sobbing loudly, but not before Althea 
had seen her face ; it was that of the woman she 
was seeking. 

The man by the box began to speak in a low, 
conversational tone. As he stepped out of the 

247 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


shadow into the light of the lamp she recog- 
nized, with a start of surprise, the “hard case” 
of the Greenbrier revival. He did not look like 
a hard case now. He was shabbily dressed, 
but his thin, dark face wore an expression of 
earnestness, of absorbed interest, of what even 
seemed like love for the people about him. 

“I was vile, like that thief,” he said; “I de- 
fied God. I cared nothing for Him; I believed 
He cared nothing for me. I broke His laws 
recklessly and rejoiced in my wickedness, or I 
pretended to rejoice, though I could never quite 
quiet the pricks of conscience, for I knew better. 
I had a mother who loved me and prayed for 
me. One day I suddenly saw all my guilt and 
was without hope, but light came and forgive- 
ness even to me — to me! — to me! — and since 
that day ‘redeeming love has been my theme, 
and shall be till I die.’ ” 

Then he pleaded with his hearers in impas- 
sioned but simple language to leave their sins 
and live good lives for the sake of the One who 
died upon the cross, for their own sakes, for the 
sake of those about them. It was not a sermon ; 
it was not even a connected discourse ; it was 
neither learned nor logical, but it was a cry 
248 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

from the heart, and the listeners knew it and 
were moved accordingly. 

Althea knew that she had encountered again 
the mysterious something which had passed her 
by. The hard case whose conversion at Green- 
brier had been so lightly regarded that he was 
not counted in by the revivalists when they 
“made up their jewels,” had found there the 
spiritual gift that made him a new man. Some- 
times she had suspected that those who professed 
to have consciously won this blessing deceived 
themselves, but there was something genuine 
here. But she could not speculate on this now. 
She stepped to the side of the yellow-haired girl 
and touched her arm. 

“Where is your baby?” she whispered. The 
girl looked up with red eyes, stupidly. “My 
baby?” she repeated wonderingly, and then 
comprehended. Through the artificial color on 
her cheeks a genuine red showed. She dropped 
her head and then lifted it and looked straight 
in Althea’s eyes. 

“I have no baby, lady; I never had. I was 
just fooling you. I wanted money. I never 
knew your husband only by name, and he never 
saw or heard of me, I reckon. I read in the 
249 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


paper that he’d gone to New York. I wanted 
money, and I’d seen you, and I guessed you 
were, well — an easy mark, and so I fixed up the 
story. I thought you looked, too, as if you had 
no sympathy for such as me, and maybe that 
made me pick on you to give you a little trouble 
instead of another. You didn’t know a body 
could be so wicked, did you? The baby is Mrs. 
Caffrey’s, across the street. His mother’s good 
to me and lets me take care of him when she 
goes washing. I’ve been a bad girl, lady, but 
I’m going to be better. I’ll pay you back that 
money some day.” 

But Mrs. Phillips was gone. She flew across 
the street. The door of the two-room shanty 
was open and she stepped in after a hasty knock. 
The baby — she would have known it anywhere 
— lay asleep on a bed ; a woman stood at a ta- 
ble ironing. 

“Are you Mrs. Caffrey, and whose baby is 
this? ” asked the visitor. 

“Oim Mrs. Caffrey, and thot boy is mine, 
born in howly wedlock, av ye plaze, an’ wud have 
a father this blessed minute av ut hadn’t bin for 
the haythenish shtame cars thot wudn’t shtop to 
rouse up a man who’d set down on the thrack to 
250 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

rest as he was cornin’ from a wake. An’ phwat 
wud ye be likin’ to know for, ma’am?” 

” It isn’t Maggie Miller’s baby? ” 

‘ ‘ Maggie Miller — the likes av her ! My little 
Patsy asked av his mother was an ondacent fa- 
male — him that had an honest father married to 
his mother by the praste. Och, the impident 
question ! Maggie, she’s got no baby, betther’s 
her luck. Not thot Maggie’s so bad, poor 
body. She’s good to little Patsy, an’ she’s over 
now helpin’ thot preacher man sing the hymns 
she used to hear in the counthry when she was a 
betther gurrl. She’d be betther askin’ the 
Howly Mother to shpake for her, an’ be confes- 
sin’ her sins to Father Ryan; but av this ware- 
house religion kapes her from divilmint it’s not 
the likes av me to shpake ill av it. But phwat 
is it, leddy? ” 

The lady, with a strange look on her face, 
apologized confusedly for her visit and hurried 
up the street, Mrs. Caffrey peering after her and 
talking volubly to herself. Her mind was in a 
tumult. She had condemned her husband on 
the first charge against him, without question 
and without giving him a chance for defense. 
She had emphasized the injury by offering to 
251 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

extend pardon to him. Pardon! When she 
was the one to need forgiveness ! And he was 
away and she wanted to see him at once. 

In the morning came a message. There had 
been a railroad accident at a junction fifty miles 
away. David Phillips had been seriously hurt. 
Would she come? 

She was on the train in an hour. It seemed 
years since the calm, uneventful period of her early 
married life when she had sometimes fancied 
that she was born with a limited capacity for 
emotion. She knew better now; depths had 
been sounded and were stirred. She had learned 
what love and suffering meant, and more suffer- 
ing was before her. The thing that most be- 
wildered her was being suddenly and unques- 
tionably in the wrong. She had been accus- 
tomed always to be right, or to think herself so. 
She had never been a suppliant to God or man. 
She wondered if she had been self-righteous, and 
was filled with sudden humility. She was ready 
to humble herself before man, at least. The 
train did not move fast enough. Would David 
forgive her? Would she reach him in time? 

She found him at a farm-house with a broken 
leg and many bruises, but he would live. She 
252 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

had long explanations to make, but as she knelt 
by his side could only gasp: 

“I was wrong; it was not true; I was mis- 
taken.” 

He drew her face to his, and she knew pardon 
was hers, and love. 

“It hurt me, sweetheart, that you believed 
the story,” he whispered, faintly, “but when 
you were ready to take me back in spite of what 
you believed, when you could forgive such a 
wrong, I knew you loved me — and — and I had 
been afraid.” 

He closed his eyes with a look of utter peace 
and the doctors decreed silence, but she sat 
by his side through the day, nor knew that the 
hours were long. 

The miracle of spring was being wrought 
upon the world. But yesterday the trees had 
been bare ; to-day in the sunshine their buds 
had burst into green, the peach trees were pink 
with bloom, the dandelions shone yellow in the 
grass. A sense of growth, of transformation, 
was in the very air. 

What comes so suddenly to buds and flowers 
may come to the human soul. 

Under the sod and through the harsh reign of 
253 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


frosts and snows the way had been prepared for 
the wonder of the trees. Motherhood, bereave- 
ment and tears, injured love and humiliation, 
and the later happiness had done their silent 
work upon the woman nature. The time had 
come for a new birth. 

In the dusk she left David and wandered 
down a grassy lane. In the western sky beyond 
the broad prairie, the gorgeous tints of the sun- 
set faded into blue and pearl. The soft, damp 
air brought the smell of the fresh earth from 
the newly plowed field; a spicy odor from a 
wild apple tree, now a mass of pale pink, was 
wafted to her. A robin chirped sleepily among 
the young maple leaves overhead. The tender, 
elusive charm of the season of growth was all 
about her. But was it only this that so moved 
her, she vaguely wondered. She had known 
the joy of spring before, and it was not like 
this. Her soul seemed lifted up. She felt 
dimly that a greater glory than she had known 
was just beyond. 

Inside the open door of a little cottage down 
the lane a woman sat by a lamp sewing and 
singing. Her voice rose sweet and clear: 


254 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 


“Just as I am — though tossed about. 

With many a conflict, many a doubt, 

With fears within and foes without — 

O Lamb of God, I come!” 

All her life she had been familiar with the 
hymns that expressed the thoughts of the world 
seeking God — hymns of penitence, of agony, of 
peace and praise, of ecstatic worship — and she 
had not known their meaning. All at once 
light came. She lifted up her arms. 

“O Lamb of God! O Lamb of God!” she 
whispered. The cloud that had obscured her 
spiritual sight lifted. She saw herself an im- 
perfect human creature, but, with all her faults 
and frailties, an atom of the divine essence; her 
little life a part of the divine plan ; her sorrows 
and trials the discipline inflicted by love. Be- 
fore her suddenly appeared her lost child, the 
child she had mourned without hope, a glorified 
vision. Its baby hands beckoned her ; its sweet 
lips smiled. Love for child and husband, the 
old earthly love, filled her bosom with a power 
she had not known, but there was a love greater 
than this. Could that be hers, also? 

She tried to pray, but could not form her 


255 


THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 

thoughts. Was that a touch upon her hair, a 
whisper in her ear? Surely she heard the words : 

“Come unto Me all ye that are heavy laden." 
She stood trembling as in a holy presence. Her 
face turned toward the sky. 

“O Lamb of God — O Lamb of God, I come." 
He heard in heaven. Joy enfolded her as a 
garment. Divine peace fell upon her. Her 
soul was born. 


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